Great Strides, Great Sacrifices

"Every step towards the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle..." 

(Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom:  The Montgomery Story)

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew that if he were to make strides in his cause of Civil Rights, he would have to sacrifice.  His followers knew they would have to sacrifice.  For every gain there is a loss.  When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in 1955, her stance sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  Rosa paid a price:  she spent a night in jail; she received so much scorn that she and her husband moved to Detroit about a year later.  But the boycott worked and in 1956, the busses were desegregated. (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2015/09/rosa-parks-writes-about-her-arrest.html)

David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil and Ezell Blair Jr. knew they would have to sacrifice when they took their seats at a Greensboro lunch counter.  What they ordered was a cup of coffee and a donut; what they received was a peppering of hate by the surrounding crowd.  Their dignity was stretched to the limit.  But the Greensboro Four sparked sit ins in 55 other cities in 13 states.  Because of their stance, lunch counters became integrated across the country. (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-greensboro-four.html)

James Peck knew that he would have to sacrifice when he joined the Freedom Riders in 1961.  A radical journalist, Peck was one of the white protesters campaigning for equal rights for blacks.  If racist whites treated blacks poorly, they treated whites even worse since they were considered traitors to their race.  At the Birmingham Trailways Bus Station, Peck and his fellow Freedom Riders were surrounded by an angry mob.  A riot broke out, led by the Ku Klux Klan, and Peck was beaten to within an inch of his life, sustaining severed injuries to his head and face.  Peck waited for an hour for an ambulance willing to take him to the all-white Carraway Methodist Hospital where they refused to treat him.  His price for supporting the Civil Rights cause was 53 stitches which he received at Jefferson Hillman Hospital.  In November of 1961, the interstate bussing laws changed allowing blacks and whites to sit together. (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-freedom-riders.html)

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. paid the price in many ways for his Civil Rights movement.  He spent many nights in jail for his protests.  He paid the ultimate price with his life, gunned down by an assassin in 1968.  "Every step towards the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle..."

http://www.scoopnest.com/user/JMitchellNews/548866173559775232

Viola Desmond

Black Canadian Viola Desmond owned a beauty parlour in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  On a cold, blustery day in 1946, she set out on a business trip to Sydney, but her car broke down in New Glasgow.  The mechanic said it would take hours to fix so she took in a movie to pass the time.

After buying her ticket, and finding her seat at the Roseland Theatre, Viola was interrupted by the manager who said she would have to take a seat upstairs in the balcony "where her people sat".  Just as Rosa Parks would refuse to move to the back of the bus nine years later, Viola Desmond refused to move to the balcony. The police were called and Viola was thrown in jail and charged with a trumped up account of tax evasion (the price difference between a main floor ticket, 40 cents, and a balcony ticket, 30 cents).

Viola lost her case as well as a subsequent appeal and was forced to pay a fine.  In 2010, the Nova Scotia government formally pardoned Viola posthumously.  Canada Post issued a stamp in her honour in 2012.  The documentary, Long Road to Justice:  The Viola Desmond Story tells what happened on that blustery day in 1946 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI00i9BtsQ8).

https://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/personal/collecting/stamps/2012/2012_feb_john_ware_viola_desmond.jsf

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.

Viola Desmond Won't Be Budged

In honour of Black History Month, here is a blog I first posted in 2011.

Wearing an elegant green dress, a feathered hat, elbow-length white gloves and a neatly coiffed hairdo, Viola Desmond did not look like she belonged in a jail cell, and yet that is where she sat on the evening of November 8, 1946.  What was her crime?  Tax evasion to the tune of one penny.

Viola Desmond was born in Nova Scotia, one of fifteen children.  She married and purchased her own beauty parlour in Halifax.  On November 8, she set out for Sydney, Nova Scotia for an appointment, but experienced car trouble during a blizzard and was forced to stop at a garage in New Glasgow.  After the auto mechanic told Viola she would have to wait until the following day to have her vehicle repaired, she decided to take in a movie. 

Buying a ticket at the Roseland Theatre and finding a seat on the main floor, Viola started to watch the main feature, but was interrupted by the manager who asked her to move to the balcony, the Black section of the theatre.  Mrs. Desmond maintained that she had purchased a ticket like the other patrons and refused to budge.  The manager would not offer to sell her a ticket for the main floor for 40 cents, 10 cents more than the balcony.  Instead, he ran out into the street, grabbed a policeman and the two men dragged the petite beauty parlour owner out of the theatre, leaving her hip and knees bruised.

Viola found herself in the local jail, sitting bolt upright all night in her elegant dress and elbow-length gloves.  She faced either a 30-day jail sentence or a $20 fine; she chose to pay the fine, plus $6 in court fees.  The judge claimed that the defendant was not charged due to her skin colour, but rather for purchasing a balcony ticket, rather than a main floor ticket (the difference in taxes was one cent).  Viola appealed the decision on racist grounds, but her appeal was rejected.  A second appeal, however, resulted in a victory for Viola, thanks to a technicality.

Her marriage, unfortunately, did not survive the trial, but her dignity did.  The entrepreneur sold her beauty salon, went to business school in Montreal and later moved to New York where she had plans to open another business, but died shortly after.   The woman that would later be referred to as "Canada's Rosa Parks" was officially pardoned by the Nova Scotia government on April 15, 2010.  The same year, a picture book written by Jody Nyasha Warner, titled Viola Desmond Won't Be Budged, was published. 

So, the next time you purchase a movie ticket and choose a seat at the local theatre, think about Viola Desmond on that blustery day back in 1946.


Photo courtesy www.umanitoba.ca.

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.

Jackie Robinson Pens Protest Letter to Eisenhower

"I was sitting in the audience at the Summit Meeting of Negro leaders yesterday when you said we must have patience.  On hearing you say this, I felt like standing up and saying:  'Oh no!  Not again.'

I respectfully remind you sir that we have been the most patient of all people." (Jackie Robinson)

It was 1958 -- eleven years since the first black man officially played in the National Baseball League; four years since the ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education; three years since Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus; and one year since the National Guard escorted nine students to Little Rock High.  

Yet, America was still a long way from fulling integrating blacks into white society.  Jackie Robinson, who had integrated professional baseball, had just hung up his number 42 jersey.  He penned a letter to President Eisenhower indicating his frustration with the civil rights movement, which, after making giant strides, had seemed to stall.  

"I was sitting in the audience at the Summit meeting of negro leaders yesterday when you said we must have patience.  On hearing you say this, I felt like standing up and saying:  'Oh no!  Not again.' (www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/jackie_robinson_letter/).  I respectfully remind you sir that we have been the most patient of all people."  He pointed out that Negroes were striving to attain goals that Whites had already been granted over 150 years before.

"17 million Negroes cannot do as you suggest and wait for the hearts of men to change," implored Robinson.  In 1958, Negroes represented about 10 percent of the American population, a significant amount.  Robinson wanted actions, not words, for the Civil Rights Movement to move forward.  

Robinson saw President Eisenhower's attitude of forbearance as encouraging, not discouraging, the segregationists.  He reminded the President about Governor Faubus, who, the previous year, had blocked the school entry of the Little Rock Nine.  

The baseball legend drove his point home by stating:  "would let it be known that America is determined to provide -- in the near future -- for Negroes -- the freedoms we are entitled to under the Constitution."

Note:  For more information about Jackie Robinson, read "You Give Me the Number, I'll Give You the Guts!" at http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2013/04/april-15.html.

Jackie Robinson (right) meets Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders circa 1950's courtesy http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/publication/2009/01/20090106142542jmnamdeirf0.8552515.html#axzz3l0Ucr18M.

Civil Rights Poetry

From slavery to Black Power, poets have been moved to write about civil rights.

1.  To Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe (1854), was written in reaction to the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel loosely based on the slave life of Josiah Hensen
(http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/africam/afpo03at.html).

http://www.blackpast.org/aah/uncle-toms-cabin-1852

2.  The Hunters of Men (1835), written by John Greenleaf Whittier, brings to the forefront the hunting of escaped slaves, complete with hounds and whips (http://www.bartleby.com/372/236.html).

http://myweb.northshore.edu/users/sherman/whittier/abolitionist/huntersofmen.html

3.  I Have Seen Black Hands (1934), written by Richard Wright, who was denied a library card as a child because he was black (https://www.questia.com/magazine/1P3-44716921/i-have-seen-black-hands).

http://www.literaryramblings.com/1000-books-in-10-years-vol-262-quicksand-by-nella-larsen

4.  Let America be America Again (1936), written by Langston Hughes, talks about all skin colours (http://www.crmvet.org/poetry/fhughes.htm#flabaa).

http://hivesociety.weebly.com/the-buzz/let-america-be-america-again

5.  A Seat on the Bus for Rosa, by Luke Easter, focusses on seamstress Rosa Parks who, in 1954, refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to a white person, prompting the famous bus boycott (http://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/a_seat_on_the_bus_for_rosa_22607).

http://deepsouthmag.com/2015/02/mrs-parks-and-the-maids-of-mississippi/

6.  Ode to Emmett Till (2013) was written in honour of the black boy who was lynched for supposedly "whistling" at a white girl in 1955 (http://www.powerpoetry.org/poems/ode-emmett-till).

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

7.  The Little Girl from Little Rock (2004), by Joan Dresner Bernstein, features the black girl who along with nine other helped integrate Little Rock High in 1957 (http://www.crmvet.org/poetry/pjoan.htm).



                             

http://potus-geeks.livejournal.com/232302.html

8.  Mississippi Burning Poem, written by blogger Leah (2011), talks about the four civil rights activists who were murdered in Mississippi in 1964 (http://until-im27.blogspot.ca/2011/06/mississippi-burning-poems.html).

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/28/us/mississippi-murders/

9.  Here is my civil rights poem, Justice for Johnnie Mae (2008), written in honour of the mother of ten, Johnnie Mae Chappell, who was gunned down on her way home from work in Florida in 1964.

In the ditch at the end of the day

A black lady looked for her wallet.

Inside was all of her weekly pay,

This mother of ten named Johnnie Mae.

As a loud shot rang out, she was hit.

An ambulance marked "colored" was hailed.

Her husband held her hand for a bit,

Yet despite his pleas, her heart soon quit.

At the church, as her small children wailed

Murdered Johnnie Mae was laid to rest.

But five months went by with no one jailed

In old Jacksonville, justice had failed.

"Four white men killed her" detectives say.

But the sheriff freed them anyway.

Ten grown children continue to pray

All seeking justice for Johnnie Mae.

http://crimefeed.com/2014/04/murder-johnnie-mae-chappell/

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.