She Would Not Give Up Her Seat on the Bus, or If Can't Sell It I'll Keep Sittin' On ItRosa Parks died two days ago at the age of 92. She died in Detroit, where she had lived since 1965, and damned be the three million left without power by Hurricane Wilma and the arrival at the milestone of 2000 Americans dead in Iraq - to the local TV news media, Parks' death and "legacy" was the only story worth covering.
Rosa Parks was the winner of a kind of competion held by NAACP. They knew that Brown vs. Board of Education had made segregated public transporatation unconstutional, but local laws on the books in the South were still being enforced and they needed a test case to try and take it to the Supreme Court. So several members of Southern chapters of the NAACP tried to challenge the law - most got fined and never captured the attention of the NAACP or of history. Parks was attractive, married, educated and had no skeletons in her closet, just the sort of person of whom Mamie Eisenhower might think "well why should she have to give up her seat?" And she spent a little time in jail, which was icing on the cake.
I do commend the NAACP in this project - it was probably the single smartest thing they could've done under the situation, utilizing their members to effect a change in the law. And Parks was placed at considerable risk herself - death threats and other unpleasantries are what ultimately drove her to Detroit. But amid all the glowing tributes and gushing sentiments on the local news observing her passing, there was something not sitting well with me. About a year or so ago at this time there was a local news story that Rosa Parks was being threatened with eviction from her house. She hadn't paid her rent in something like sixteen months. A foundation she had set up in her own name in 1997 had already gone to seed. I don't know if she was involved in the legal action spearheaded by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson against the makers of the film "Barbershop" in which a fictional character defamed her. The result was that the offending scene was removed from the DVD, but remained in the film as released, and it seems likely that Parks never benefitted from it.
At the time she was facing evcition, it was vaguely stated that "somebody" in Detroit was going to attend to her plight, and there was simply no word about it afterward. Was she just a stubborn old woman, and refused to give up her seat in her own home in favor of one in a nursing home? My daughter told me that when her teacher announced that Parks was dead in class that nearly a quarter of her fellow students, including herself, thought Parks dead already. It makes me wonder about the nature of "iconic legacy" people in this country - once we fashion someone into a "icon" then maybe we forget about the person behind it.
There's a really nice museum to Rosa Parks in Alabama, which bears a full size statue of her sitting on her bus seat - couldn't they have arranged to set aside a room to accomodate Parks herself upstairs? Fox 2 's correspondants collected testimonials from Detroiters far and wide - a representative of a girls' club at a predominantly white high school, thankfully restraining from popping the chewing gum tucked into her cheek, explained that they named their club in honor of Rosa Parks as she lived practically down the street from the school. I felt a little sorry for Chauncey Billups, Pistons' forward, as pressed into service by a reporter he stammered out an incomprehensible tribute to Parks' memory which ended in the words "she changed everything."
Well no - not everything. There are plenty of folks left in this country that are less than satisfied with the legacy of the civil rights movement, and Acceptance of Rosa Parks as an "icon" is by no means universal even in the black community. This includes some Black Americans whom the makers of "Barbershop" attempted to represent by virtue of what the older character said in the movie, a sentiment ultimately suppressed by prominant civil rights leaders. Fox2 posted two different addresses where one could send donations - the address of her foundation, and a separate account at TCF Bank where one can contribute to Rosa Parks as a person. Her death is probably the best thing that could have happened for the foundation, but if I had money to contribute, and God knows I don't, I would send it to the private account. In any case, the purpose of this whole harangue is to point out that in the unceasing outpouring of accolades for Rosa Parks in the wake of her death, something significant about her story is not being related to the public, and it might be some time before we really find out what it is.
In any event, her body will lie in state in Detroit for a few days, and will be transferred to Alabama where it will again lie in state for a day or two until internment on November 2.
Uncle Dave Lewis