On the good,
better, and best ways to remember an iconic moment and figure.
Given that Rosa Parks has
to be on the very short list for the best-remembered African
Americans (and historical Americans period), it would seem silly to argue that
we should remember her more than we do. If anything, many historians and journalists have
argued that narratives of the Civil Rights movement focus too fully on
Parks as an origin point, and not enough on all the others who contributed to
and influenced the movement. While it’s always good to broaden our collective
memories, I think our starting point for remembering Rosa Parks is indeed a
good one, and that it’s both appropriate and American (in the best sense) that
we connect the movement’s origins not only to public leaders like King, but also
to a much more private individual like Parks.
On the other
hand, Park’s famous stand (or rather seat) was neither as private nor as
individual as our dominant narratives emphasize. Parks (born Rosa McCauley) had
been connected to the NAACP since her 1932 marriage to
Raymond Parks, already an active member of the organization; she herself
joined the Montgomery
chapter in 1943, and was elected the chapter’s secretary in the same year. She
had thus been active in the civil rights organization for a dozen years (and
connected to it for more than two decades) by the time of her fateful December 1955
bus ride; and moreover, four months earlier she had attended an August 1955
mass meeting in Montgomery at which activist
T.R.M. Howard outlined the many different ways African Americans could
advocate for their rights in their own communities. All of which is to say, it’s
far from coincidental that Parks’ refusal to give up her seat precipated the Montgomery Bus Boycott, an
activist effort led by organizations like the NAACP and activists like Howard
(among many others of course).
Yet if it would be
better for us to remember that Rosa Parks spent her lifetime working in and
with communities and organizations dedicated to civil rights, it seems to me
that the best way to remember her and her bus ride would be to push one step
further still, linking the private and public sides to her action. After all,
however much her refusal to give up her seat may have been part of a larger
strategy or effort, it was also a profoundly individual, and profoundly
courageous, choice; that August 1955 meeting was in response to the Emmett Till lynching, a stark
reminder that every African American in the Jim Crow South was at all times in
danger of violent attack and death—and certainly that any who fought the power,
who bucked the system in the ways that Park did (or, indeed, in far less overt
ways, like Till), were doubly at risk for such terrorism. Which is to say,
Parks’ connection to and knowledge of her city and region’s civil rights
histories don’t diminish her individual action in the slightest—instead, they
amplify its impressiveness.
Next complex
history tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
Other Civil Rights histories or stories you’d highlight?
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