A tribute to Rosa Parks

A tribute to Rosa Parks

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By Percy F. Makombe

ROSA Louise Parks who has died at the age of 92 was known as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement. She embodied to all of America and beyond, the spirit of defiance, courage and hope.

There are people who when they stand, the world notices and stands with them. Parks achieved the same feat by seating.

In refusing to give up her seat to a white man who wanted to sit in the same row, Parks set in motion events that added impetus to the struggle for civil liberties. The sitting arrangement in those municipal buses was organised in such a way that only whites were allowed to occupy the front row. The back row was for blacks, but even then blacks were compelled to abandon their seats if the front rows were filled up. It was basically illegal to sit down when a white person was standing.

Parks defiance came at a time when the black leaders in Montgomery, Alabama were unsuccessfully trying to organise a boycott to protest the law that forbid blacks from sitting with whites. The segregation laws were so unreasonably as to border on the farcical. For example, black people would pay the fare to the bus driver, and then they had to get off the bus and use a back door to get in. It was not unusual for the bus to drive off before the blacks who had paid had boarded. The indignity that the black people were subjected to was all the more painful because the majority of the drivers were black.

It was therefore Parks’ defiance that galvanised the civil rights revolution and even catapulted a young man better known as Martin Luther King Jr to national status. Asked about her act of defiance, the ever humble Parks said, “I did not get on the bus to get arrested, I got on the bus to go home.”

Her act of defiance on that historic day on 1 December, 1955 led to her arrest. The arrest in turn sparked a 382-day Montgomery Bus Boycott that ran for more than a year from December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956. The boycott ended only after the US Supreme Court had ruled that segregation on the city buses violated the constitution.

In narrating her history, the point has often been missed that Parks’ civil rights activism did not begin with the bus boycott. She was already a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She was a member of the local chapter of NAACP which she had joined together with her husband Raymond Park soon after graduating from the Alabama State Teachers College.

Parks had always worked hard for a better life for Afro-Americans. She dealt with cases of rape, lynching and flogging. In her own words: “It was a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be, and let it be known that we did not wish to continue being second class citizens.”

In August 1994 she was attacked and robbed of $50 in her house in Detroit. She was philosophical about the incident, “I pray for this young man and the conditions in our country that have made him this way.”

Reminiscing about her act of defiance in her book Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation, Parks says: “Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it. I kept thinking about my mother and my grandparents, and how strong they were. I knew there was a possibility of being mistreated, but an opportunity was being given to me to do what I had asked of others.”

It is easy for struggle icons to bask in the glory of praise and in some cases personalise the fight for freedom, not so for Parks, “I am still uncomfortable with the credit given to me for starting the bus boycott. I would like people to know I was not the only person involved. I was just one of the many who fought for freedom.” How refreshing and how so different from those who believe they have a monopoly to the struggle for liberation.

By seating down, Rosa Parks stood for our rights. She stood up against racism. She stood up for herself, for you, for me, for us. She is a true freedom fighter.

Percy F. Makombe is a former Chief-Sub Editor of the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper and writes from Scotland
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