"Sister Rosa"

The Rev. Suzanne Meyer

A reading from "Everybody Says Freedom"

December 5, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama—E.D. Nixon, a Pullman porter and a longtime activist in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), had been trying to unite the black population of Montgomery to fight Jim Crow. One afternoon in early December he got a call in his office that Rosa Parks, a respected Montgomery seamstress and a member of the NAACP, had just been arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man.

Nixon put down the phone. "This is it," he said to himself. "Everybody knows Rosa Parks. This is the issue that could unify the whole community."

He called the NAACP in Washington. "Oh this is very interesting," they said. "We'll discuss it at our meeting next week."

"Next week?" cried E.D. Nixon, "We've got to move today!"

Nixon hung up the phone and dialed again. He called the pastor of the Dexter Street Baptist church and explained the situation. Then he asked if he could hold a meeting at that church. The pastor was brand new and very young, only 26 years old, and he hesitated, "I'll have to check with my deacons. Can you call me back in two hours?"

Meanwhile, Jo Anne Gibson Robinson, a teacher at Alabama State College, met with the other leaders of the Montgomery Women's Political Council. They decided that they would pour all of their efforts into a one day bus boycott. Jo Ann Gibson Robinson and her organization mobilized dozens of teachers and students to mimeograph and distribute 35,000 leaflets throughout the city. On Sunday preachers spread the word from their pulpits. "Tomorrow morning Rosa Parks will go on trial. Do not ride the buses." Montgomery's 120 black-owned taxis agreed to transport people to work.

On Monday morning it looked like rain. The wife of that young Baptist minister looked out her front window, and shouted to her husband "Martin, Martin, come quickly!" Martin Luther King never forgot the moment. "As I approached the front window Coretta pointed joyfully to a slowly moving bus: 'Darling, it's empty!''"

Downtown they found Rosa Parks guilty of violating the Alabama segregation laws.

—Pete Seeger and Bob Reiser

I was watching one of the many televised tributes to Rosa Parks following her death several weeks ago. It hardly seems like it has been half a century, but in less than a month from now, on December 1, many Americans will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Park's refusal to move to the back of the bus. I was watching the crowds moving slowly and respectfully past her body as she lay in state in the capital rotunda, the first woman to be so honored. Then a rather breathless, young female television reporter walked in front of the camera and said something on the order of: "These people have come to pay their last respects to Rosa Parks, the woman who single-handedly started the modern civil rights movement when she spontaneously refused to move to the back of the bus."

Of course the young TV reporter was not even born 50 years ago when Rosa Parks was arrested, so I suppose she can be forgiven for her limited understanding of the real events that led up to the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. Not only that, but in this age of celebrities, media darlings, and the 30-second sound bite, the real story of Rosa Parks and the Bus Boycott is a story that can't be properly told in a style suited to today's television journalism. The real story of Rosa Parks is not the story of one woman who single-handedly changed the course of American history with an impromptu act of resistance. It is the story of many people and many deliberate, conscious acts. And while I take nothing away from Rosa Parks and her personal courage, behind the woman and the boycott there were several important groups of individuals and a strategy that was a long time in the making. We need to remember and honor Rosa Parks, but we also need to know what really happened on that day and what led up to it.

This is what we are told happened: Rosa Parks was a poor tired seamstress. One day in December on her way home from work Rosa sat down in the front of the bus. As the bus got crowded, the bus driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back. Too tired to move, Rosa resisted and remained in her seat. The bus driver called the police and had her arrested for violating the segregation laws. The bus boycott was organized and led by Martin Luther King, Jr.

The facts behind the story reveal something completely different. Much more than a poor, tired seamstress at the time of her arrest, Rosa Parks was a respected community leader and a longtime activist. She was elected secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter in 1943, and as a member of the NAACP, she worked on voter registration and youth programs. In fact, on that particular December 1st, she was on her way home to prepare for a youth workshop she was leading that weekend. Mrs. Parks was also employed in the office of the Union of Sleeping Car Porters, where she had developed a working relationship with union organizer E. D. Nixon. Additionally, Parks was a graduate of the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, a well-known center for training activists and organizers associated with the labor movement.

Before her arrest, Mrs. Parks was already a high profile member of the African-American community in Montgomery, Alabama, as the result of her activism in the cause of school desegregation following Brown vs. the Board of Education.

Not only was Rosa Parks much more than just a poor tired seamstress, her refusal to move to the back of the bus was far from an impulsive act. According to Parks, that day in December was not the first time she had refused to give up her seat on a bus, nor was it the first time that a bus driver had thrown her off the bus, but it was the first time that the bus driver had called the police and had her arrested for refusing to leave her seat.

The bus boycott itself was the brainchild of Jo Anne Gibson Robinson. In 1949, six years before Rosa Parks was arrested, Jo Anne Gibson Robinson, a professor at Alabama State College, was evicted from a Montgomery city bus for refusing to move from her seat in the fifth row of an almost empty bus.

Professor Robinson was the head of the Women's Political Council and with the Council she conceived the idea for a bus boycott that would not only become a symbol of solidarity in the African-American community, but would also bankrupt the public transportation system in Montgomery. The Woman's Political Council was ready to start the boycott, but they were waiting for someone to be arrested for defying the segregation laws on public transportation. That someone had to be a man or a woman with an impeccable reputation in both the white and black communities and also be a good spokesperson for the movement.

When Professor Robinson got the word that Rosa Parks was going to refuse to pay her fine and take her case to court, she knew that she had to act and that she didn't have much time. The English Professor called her closest friends on the Women's Political Council and begged them to meet her late at night on the campus of Alabama State. These women knew that if they were stopped and questioned by the police they could not tell the truth about where they were headed at such a late hour or why. Robinson and her friends met about midnight at their offices on campus, each under the pretext of staying late at school in order to finish grading final exams.

There, they drafted letters of protest. "Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown into jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus and give it to a white person. Until we do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. This woman's case will come up Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses on Monday in protest of the arrest and trial." As they worked, the women felt urgency closing in upon them. How would they get the word out into the black community? Given their lack of access to newspapers or radio, the only way they could announce the boycott was to distribute leaflets to the town through the black churches. They realized the best place to print copies of such an incendiary letter was precisely where they were - at Alabama State on the mimeograph machines. If white people ever learned that state employed teachers had used taxpayer-owned facilities to plot a revolt against segregation laws, these teachers would be fired and budgets would surely be cut. So the women worked all night, resolved to finish the mammoth task before daylight and never to speak of what they had done.

At 3:00 in the morning on December 5, Professor Robinson called E. D. Nixon, of the Montgomery NAACP and told him that the boycott was on.

The boycott lasted a day, and then another day, and then another day—381 days in all. Citizens volunteered to drive the boycotters to work in private automobiles—150 citizens volunteered-black, white, rich, poor, retirees, and college students.

On December 5, the day of Rosa Parks' conviction, a group of black clergymen met at the Mt. Zion AME Church to form the Montgomery Improvement Association, the group that would direct the bus boycott. The 26-year-old pastor of the Dexter Street Baptist Church was nominated to lead the new organization. The young man paused, then said, "Well, if you think I can render some service, I will." (Years later Martin Luther King, Jr., confessed that even though he accepted the nomination he was "possessed by fear" that he would not be able to carry it off, and was "obsessed by a feeling of inadequacy."

Today, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., are recognized as icons of the Civil Rights Movement. Fifty years ago, who could have imagined that we would have a Federal holiday in honor of Dr. King or that Rosa Parks would be the first woman to lie in state at the capital. And indeed King and Parks are moral exemplars, courageous individuals who took a stand in the face of prejudice, open hostility, and murderous violence. Why then do we need to be reminded of the real story behind the Montgomery Boycott and to once again hear the names of the other leaders and strategists? Why can't we just tell and retell the story of the poor tired seamstress and her impromptu protest, and the young clergyman who single-handedly stepped forward to change history? Because that story is not the whole story. . . .

Rosa Parks was a member of a labor union, and the NAACP; Jo Anne Robinson was a member of the Women's Political Council; E. D. Nixon was a member of the Sleeping Car Porter's Union and the NAACP; Martin Luther King, Jr. was a member of the Montgomery Improvement Association before he stepped into leadership. They did not act alone, nor were their actions impulsive. Each of these individuals was part of larger groups; each of these civil rights leaders was part of organizations dedicated to the development and training of future leaders. The Civil Rights Movement was not started or carried out by single individuals either acting alone or impulsively.

Today, fewer and fewer young men and women are joining labor unions; fewer still are joining the NAACP, the Urban League, the American Civil Liberties Union, or the League of Women Voters. Most of the young men and women I know also claim to be very spiritual but disdain what they call organized religion. Why join anything? Why not stay at home and be spiritual on your own? Who needs associations, unions, leagues, churches or organized anything anymore?

Nurtured on a modern day myth of celebrities, heroes, and media darlings, it is easy (I suspect) for this new generation to believe that social change takes place in an instant, when a single man or woman takes it in their head to act, grabs hold of the moment, steps in front of the TV camera, and the rest is history. Today we seem to imagine that it is all about the cult of personality and individual charisma rather than about a team effort, community organizing, networking, and a long haul strategy for social change.

What use do today's young men and women have for endless meetings and strategy sessions, knocking on doors, holding rallies, passing out petitions, conducting surveys, educating voters, attending demonstrations, and even starting boycotts? Who could convince this generation that small groups of men and women meeting in church basements and union halls could start a revolution? Could win for women and African-Americans the right to vote? Could influence industries to grant their workers health insurance, sick leave and an eight-hour work day? Could win rights for children, prisoners, or migrant workers? Could lay the foundation for social improvement organization such as South Side Day Nursery? In this high-speed internet, palm pilot, satellite network, infotainment world, the kinds of activities that take place when people gather in church basements and union halls and meeting rooms—old-fashioned grassroots democracy at work—seems slow, tedious, and not terribly glamorous. Where's the glory in that? Where are the TV cameras? Why can't we just sit back, watch, and wait for a hero or a heroine, someone photogenic, charismatic, and media savvy to come out of nowhere and step into the spotlight and capture our imaginations again? Why do we still need to do the old fashioned work of organizing, of institutionalizing our values in the form of voluntary associations, unions, leagues, and collectives?

Who will remind our children and their children that successful social movements don't just happen overnight when a lone individual acts on impulse? Who will tell them the real story of what took place in Montgomery, Alabama 50 years ago? Who will tell them about the Unitarian women who started South Side Day Nursery? Which one of you will invite a young adult to come to a meeting and join with others to put their faith and their idealism to use in the service of something greater than themselves? Who will teach them how to lead? Who will teach them how to organize? Will it be you?

Recalling the words of Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has." Amen.