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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.

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]

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]