By Jim Heffernan
This is the 1955 booking photo of Rosa Parks taken in the Montgomery, Alabama jail. She had committed the heinous crime of sitting on a bus seat reserved for white patrons.
She’s 42 years old in this picture. She was a seamstress at a Montgomery Department store and she was a secretary at the local NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).
When she got off work at 6pm, she paid her fare and sat down in the middle of the bus in the section marked “For Blacks Only”. As the bus got crowded, the driver moved the sign back 4 rows and told the blacks sitting there to move to the back of the bus. That’s how it worked in the Jim Crow south in 1955.
Three of the four people sitting in the section, moved to the back, but not Rosa. Later on she described it, “When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night.” Still later, Martin Luther King would praise her, saying “Actually, no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, ‘I can take it no longer.'”
Martin Luther King was the 26 year old minister who had just come to Montgomery to take over the Ebeneezer Baptist Church. Together they formed the M.I.A. (Montgomery Improvement Association) and started the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott that would last 382 days and all blacks avoided the buses. Black taxi drivers would give rides for ten cents, the same as bus fare. Car pools were formed. People walked and rode bikes. The boycott ended in December of 1956. The court case between the boycotters and the bus company reached the supreme court and the boycotters won. It only applied to the buses, but Jim Crow was mortally wounded.
The court verdict caused counter-protestors to attack buses and blacks. It was several weeks before bus lines was fully opened. Martin Luther King’s instructions at this time reveal his deep-seated Christian faith, “If you have weapons, take them home; if you do not have them, please do not seek to get them. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with nonviolence. Remember the words of Jesus: “He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword”. We must love our white brothers, no matter what they do to us. We must make them know that we love them. Jesus still cries out in words that echo across the centuries: “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that despitefully use you”. This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love. Remember, if I am stopped, this movement will not stop, because God is with the movement. Go home with this glowing faith and this radiant assurance.”
The notoriety Rosa gained cost her job and she received death threats. She ended up moving from Montgomery in 1957. She still was active for the cause of black advancement in Virginia and then Detroit. In 1965 she and Martin were instrumental to Ed Conyers being elected to Congress. Conyers ended up serving in Congress from 1965 to 2017. Conyers hired Rosa as a secretary and receptionist for his Detroit office. She did much of his daily constituent work. Conyers said of her, “You treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene—just a very special person … There was only one Rosa Parks.”
Rosa retired in 1988. Her later years were marred by ill health and she was victimized by criminals several times. She died when she was 92 (2005). She was the first woman and the second black to lay in state in the U. S. Capitol Rotunda.
It brought tears to my eyes to learn that her casket was transported from Detroit to Washington, D.C. in the same model bus that she held her seat in 1955.
The thought of a quiet, unassuming 42 year old woman changing the world should inspire all of us.
In these times, we need to remain firm and resolute. We, too, need to hold our seats. We need to be the same type of citizen she was.