Rosa Parks Writes About Her Arrest

"I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment I couldn't take it anymore." 

(Rosa Parks)

Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to a white person in 1955, helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.  While her name was forever etched on the history books, Parks paid a high price for her stance.  

Writing on a piece of Montgomery Department Store stationery, Parks explained:  

"I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment I couldn't take it anymore." When I asked the policeman why we had to be pushed around, he said he didn't know.  'The law is the law.  You are under arrest.'  I didn't resist." (http://www.vox.com/2015/2/4/7977373/rosa-parks-collection-documents)

The following year saw the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a successful tool to integrate public transportation in the city.  Parks lodged a protest against her arrest.  She was very much in the public eye.  Near the end of 1956, the seamstress was let go from her job at the Montgomery Department Store.  Her husband, who had been forbidden to discuss her case at work, was also let go from his position.  Old Jim Crow wasn't going to give up without a fight.

As Parks explained in her letter:

"little children are so conditioned early to learn their place in this segregated pattern as they take their first toddling steps and are weaned from their mother's breast."

In early 1957, Parks jumped through another hoop and secured her right to vote, at a time when few blacks had that right in the Deep South.  But the economic situation looked bleak in Alabama and Rosa and her husband Raymond moved to Detroit, Michigan by the early 1960's.  Rosa found work as a receptionist for a U. S. Congressman.  

For more information, read http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2011/12/on-rosas-ride.html.

*First published in 2015.

On Rosa’s ride to work and back

Down Cleveland Ave in fifty-five.

White bus driver Blake gave her flack,

But Rosa Parks would not move back.

Sewing suits from nine until five,

She did what she could to survive.

As more whites boarded, four blacks stalled.

Blake warned:  “Move back or I won’t drive!”

At six o’clock, Blake placed the call.

Police came and she took the fall.

Her only crime was being black.

She had paid her fare, after all.

Rosa’s bus ride launched the attack

On racist laws that hurt each black.

White bus driver Blake gave her flack,

But Rosa Parks would not move back.

Linda Jonasson
(August 28, 2008.)

Photo of Montgomery, Alabama bus at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan courtesy http://farm4.static.flickr.com.

Photo of Rosa Parks on Dec. 1, 1955 courtesy http://thegospelcoalition.org.

*First published in 2011.

President Barack Obama's "This is Your Victory"

Two hundred and forty thousand people assembled in Chicago's Grant Park to hear Barack Obama deliver his victory speech after the 2008 election.  He would not be the first president to hail from Chicago (Lincoln preceded him), he would not be the first youthful president (remember JFK?) but he would be America's first black President.  Here is an excerpt from the brilliant speech that he delivered on that fateful night:

"This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations.  But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta.  She's a lot like millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing:  Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.  

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.  

And tonight I think about all she's seen throughout her century in America -- the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't; and the people that pressed on with that American creed:  Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot.  Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose.  Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved.  Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that We Shall Overcome.  Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.  

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

America, we have come so far.  We have seen so much.  But there is so much more to do.  So tonight, let us ask ourselves -- if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see?  What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call.  This is our moment."

(https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/marie-claire/news-and-views/latest/a/18672507/the-most-inspirational-speeches-of-all-time/)

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/obama.transcript/

Rosa Parks Writes About Her Arrest

"I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment I couldn't take it anymore." 

(Rosa Parks)

Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to a white person in 1955, helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.  While her name was forever etched on the history books, Parks paid a high price for her stance.  

Writing on a piece of Montgomery Department Store stationery, Parks explained:  

"I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment I couldn't take it anymore." When I asked the policeman why we had to be pushed around, he said he didn't know.  'The law is the law.  You are under arrest.'  I didn't resist." (http://www.vox.com/2015/2/4/7977373/rosa-parks-collection-documents)

The following year saw the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a successful tool to integrate public transportation in the city.  Parks lodged a protest against her arrest.  She was very much in the public eye.  Near the end of 1956, the seamstress was let go from her job at the Montgomery Department Store.  Her husband, who had been forbidden to discuss her case at work, was also let go from his position.  Old Jim Crow wasn't going to give up without a fight.

As Parks explained in her letter:

"little children are so conditioned early to learn their place in this segregated pattern as they take their first toddling steps and are weaned from their mother's breast."

In early 1957, Parks jumped through another hoop and secured her right to vote, at a time when few blacks had that right in the Deep South.  But the economic situation looked bleak in Alabama and Rosa and her husband Raymond moved to Detroit, Michigan by the early 1960's.  Rosa found work as a receptionist for a U. S. Congressman.  

For more information, read http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2011/12/on-rosas-ride.html.

Let's Burn This B**** Down!

"Let's burn this b**** down!" cried the stepfather of Michael Brown after he heard the not guilty verdict handed down by the grand jury in the killing of his stepson (see the Youtube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW2HF5JzK-M).  Others standing in the street took up the chant. By the end of the night, Ferguson was ablaze.

     Martin Luther King Junior would be turning over in his grave.  Take a look at the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 1960's.  I don't remember Martin Luther King Jr. taunting the police when a cross was burned on his front lawn in 1956.  I don't remember Martin Luther King Jr. torching a police car when his house was bombed.  I don't remember Martin Luther King Jr. running away with boxes of donuts when he participated in the sit in at an Atlanta lunch counter in 1960.  I don't remember the civil rights leader lobbing Molotov cocktails into the streets of Selma, Alabama as he marched with hundreds of suit-clad protesters to Montgomery in 1963.  I don't remember the Atlanta native throwing rocks and bottles through Atlanta window fronts as he marched through his hometown.  I don't remember the father of four torching a Montgomery Walgreen's after four young black girls were murdered at the Baptist Church.  I don't remember the pastor running away with a box of tequila from a liquor store, likely owned by blacks, as he protested the lack of voting rights for blacks.  I don't remember the words "Let's burn this b**** down!" being part of the great orator's famous "I have a dream speech" which he delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Monument in Washington.

     But I do remember the 90% of blacks who refused to ride the Montgomery busses after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white person, an initiative started by King's organization.  I do remember the hundreds of protesters who sat at lunch counters, dignity oozing from every pore, as hooligans showered them with ketchup and mustard.  I do remember the long line of followers who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.  I remember the pastor's prayer as he languished in a Birmingham Jail cell.  I remember the 200,000 plus protesters who marched through Washington D.C.'s streets and then listened to King deliver his I Have a Dream speech.  I remember President Kennedy's famous civil rights speech.  And a little document called the Civil Rights Act, signed by President Johnson in 1964.

     Let's bring back Martin Luther King Jr.'s quiet dignity.  Quiet, but powerful.

March on Washington D.C. courtesy 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_on_Washington_for_Jobs_and_Freedom.