4 ms·

>history may remember her as some grand civil rights leader, but that wasn't her intent she was just a tired black woman going home from work who refused to giv

by dTal 9y ago

>history may remember her as some grand civil rights leader, but that wasn't her intent she was just a tired black woman going home from work who refused to give up her seat to a white person. Such is the popular image, but it is incorrect. She was the secretary of her local NAACP chapter, and she certainly was making a stand for civil rights. From her autobiography: "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

rrauenza 9y ago
I haven't found a good citation yet, but my understanding was that it was carefully planned and she was chosen. This gets into it a little ... http://www.npr.org/2009/03/15/101719889/before-rosa-parks-there-was-claudette-colvin http://www.npr.org/2009/03/15/101719889/before-rosa-parks-th... When asked why she is little known and why everyone thinks only of Rosa Parks, Colvin says the NAACP and all the other black organizations felt Parks would be a good icon because "she was an adult. They didn't think teenagers would be reliable." She also says Parks had the right hair and the right look. "Her skin texture was the kind that people associate with the middle class," says Colvin. "She fit that profile." David Garrow, a historian and the author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, says people may think that Parks' action was spontaneous, but black civic leaders had been thinking about what to do about the Montgomery buses for years.
- dTal 9y ago
  According to Parks herself it was a spontaneous act: "I did not think about [being the test case for the NAACP] at all. In fact if I had let myself think too deeply about what might happen to me, I might have gotten off the bus. But I chose to remain."[1] There's a lot of propaganda chaff around Rosa Parks. It seems that it was neither carefully planned, nor a completely spontaneous act of rebellion. She and a great many other people had been seething about the buses for years, and on that day she had simply had enough. I suspect the "carefully planned NAACP sting operation" narrative arose as a backlash to the equally inaccurate "totally random uninvolved old lady stands up for herself" narrative. [1] https://contexts.org/articles/telling-stories-about-rosa-parks/ https://contexts.org/articles/telling-stories-about-rosa-par...
  - skybrian 9y ago
    The New Yorker article says that the organizers were waiting for the right opportunity to come along, and this was it. Seems reasonable?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
will_brown 9y ago
Well fair play, I guess you could interpret tired in two ways, phycially or as Parks hereself said in her quote you posted tired of giving in. Second if being secretary of her NAACP chapter makes her a grand civil right leader fine, I challenge you to name a single other secretary from a local chapter beyond Parks, again I think history just has an ability to Monday morning quarterback. And fine maybe any member of the NAACP can be considered a grand civil rights leader, that's subjective anyway, my comment is replying to someone who believes protests must include the middle class to be successful, I believe history suggests otherwise and if you want to identify Parks as middle class too, fine I don't care to argue the point. Here is a pretty famous Parks' radio interview from 1956, I'll just say I have listened to it for inspiration for sometime and will continue to do so, I may not know much, but I know her own words well, and I just don't think this was some grand scheme she was cooking up for sometime as a leader of the NAACP; >The time had just come when I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed, I suppose [tired] They placed me under arrest. And I wasn’t afraid. I don’t know why I wasn’t, but I didn’t feel afraid. I had decided that I would have to know once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen, even in Montgomery, Alabama. https://www.democracynow.org/2005/10/25/rosa_parks_1913_2005_we_air https://www.democracynow.org/2005/10/25/rosa_parks_1913_2005...

by dTal 9y ago

rrauenza 9y ago

I haven't found a good citation yet, but my understanding was that it was carefully planned and she was chosen. This gets into it a little ... http://www.npr.org/2009/03/15/101719889/before-rosa-parks-there-was-claudette-colvin http://www.npr.org/2009/03/15/101719889/before-rosa-parks-th... When asked why she is little known and why everyone thinks only of Rosa Parks, Colvin says the NAACP and all the other black organizations felt Parks would be a good icon because "she was an adult. They didn't think teenagers would be reliable." She also says Parks had the right hair and the right look. "Her skin texture was the kind that people associate with the middle class," says Colvin. "She fit that profile." David Garrow, a historian and the author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, says people may think that Parks' action was spontaneous, but black civic leaders had been thinking about what to do about the Montgomery buses for years.

dTal 9y ago
According to Parks herself it was a spontaneous act: "I did not think about [being the test case for the NAACP] at all. In fact if I had let myself think too deeply about what might happen to me, I might have gotten off the bus. But I chose to remain."[1] There's a lot of propaganda chaff around Rosa Parks. It seems that it was neither carefully planned, nor a completely spontaneous act of rebellion. She and a great many other people had been seething about the buses for years, and on that day she had simply had enough. I suspect the "carefully planned NAACP sting operation" narrative arose as a backlash to the equally inaccurate "totally random uninvolved old lady stands up for herself" narrative. [1] https://contexts.org/articles/telling-stories-about-rosa-parks/ https://contexts.org/articles/telling-stories-about-rosa-par...
- skybrian 9y ago
  The New Yorker article says that the organizers were waiting for the right opportunity to come along, and this was it. Seems reasonable?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

will_brown 9y ago

Well fair play, I guess you could interpret tired in two ways, phycially or as Parks hereself said in her quote you posted tired of giving in. Second if being secretary of her NAACP chapter makes her a grand civil right leader fine, I challenge you to name a single other secretary from a local chapter beyond Parks, again I think history just has an ability to Monday morning quarterback. And fine maybe any member of the NAACP can be considered a grand civil rights leader, that's subjective anyway, my comment is replying to someone who believes protests must include the middle class to be successful, I believe history suggests otherwise and if you want to identify Parks as middle class too, fine I don't care to argue the point. Here is a pretty famous Parks' radio interview from 1956, I'll just say I have listened to it for inspiration for sometime and will continue to do so, I may not know much, but I know her own words well, and I just don't think this was some grand scheme she was cooking up for sometime as a leader of the NAACP; >The time had just come when I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed, I suppose [tired] They placed me under arrest. And I wasn’t afraid. I don’t know why I wasn’t, but I didn’t feel afraid. I had decided that I would have to know once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen, even in Montgomery, Alabama. https://www.democracynow.org/2005/10/25/rosa_parks_1913_2005_we_air https://www.democracynow.org/2005/10/25/rosa_parks_1913_2005...