Posted on 12/02/2005 5:56:41 PM PST by blam
Briton sits out racism tribute
By Harry Mount in New York
(Filed: 03/12/2005)
A British woman has outraged New Yorkers by refusing to give up a bus seat set aside to honour the civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks.
Fiona Humphreys, 55, from Bristol, was told she was sitting in a symbolic seat kept empty in honour of the 50th anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man in Alabama.
Mrs Parks's refusal to budge on Dec 1, 1955, helped spark the civil rights movement in America. But Mrs Humphreys, travelling up Fifth Avenue for a shopping trip, was the only passenger across the nation who refused to move.
"I know about Rosa Parks," said Mrs Humphreys. "But I've got a right to sit here."
Mrs Humphreys's seat was clearly marked with a poster of the iconic picture that showed the late Mrs Parks sitting on the Alabama bus.
The words, "Please keep this seat reserved in memory of Rosa Parks" were printed beneath.
The first seat behind the driver in all New York's buses was left empty as a tribute from the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Transport systems throughout America joined in. All other passengers were delighted to show their respect.
"It would be an honour to move," said Edith Green, 83, who accidentally sat in the reserved place on the same bus route as Mrs Humphreys. "I'll do it gladly. She was such a courageous woman."
Many other passengers patted the seat and expressed gratitude to Mrs Parks, the former seamstress who died in October, aged 92.
"What goes around........"
OW! Irony overload!
I'm waiting for the "symbolic" rap tune that thanks Whitey for dying to free the Black.
Let's see if I got this right. Everyone has to sit in the back of the bus to honor Rosa Parks?
Whats unusual about liberals not wanting to do what liberals demand others do?
Well, she does.
The goal of most civil rights activism is not equality, but retribution.
We learn much from how we present our heroes. A few years ago, on Martin Luther King. Day, I was interviewed on CNN. So was Rosa Parks, by phone from Los Angeles. "We're very honored to have her," said the host. "Rosa Parks was the woman who wouldn't go to the back of the bus. She wouldn't get up and give her seat in the white section to a white person. That set in motion the year-long bus boycott in Montgomery. It earned Rosa Parks the title of 'mother of the Civil Rights movement.'"I was excited to hear Parks's voice and to be part of the same show. Then it occurred to me that the host's description--the story's standard rendition and one repeated even in many of her obituaries--stripped the Montgomery boycott of all of its context. Before refusing to give up her bus seat, Parks had been active for twelve years in the local NAACP chapter, serving as its secretary. The summer before her arrest, she'd had attended a ten-day training session at Tennessee's labor and civil rights organizing school, the Highlander Center, where she'd met an older generation of civil rights activists, like South Carolina teacher Septima Clark, and discussed the recent Supreme Court decision banning "separate-but-equal" schools. During this period of involvement and education, Parks had become familiar with previous challenges to segregation: Another Montgomery bus boycott, fifty years earlier, successfully eased some restrictions; a bus boycott in Baton Rouge won limited gains two years before Parks was arrested; and the previous spring, a young Montgomery woman had also refused to move to the back of the bus, causing the NAACP to consider a legal challenge until it turned out that she was unmarried and pregnant, and therefore a poor symbol for a campaign.
In short, Rosa Parks didn't make a spur-of-the-moment decision. She didn't single-handedly give birth to the civil rights efforts, but she was part of an existing movement for change, at a time when success was far from certain. We all know Parks's name, but few of us know about Montgomery NAACP head E.D. Nixon, who served as one of her mentors and first got Martin Luther King involved. Nixon carried people's suitcases on the trains, and was active in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the union founded by legendary civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph. He played a key role in the campaign. No one talks of him, any more than they talk of JoAnn Robinson, who taught nearby at an underfunded and segregated Black college and whose Women's Political Council distributed the initial leaflets following Parks's arrest. Without the often lonely work of people like Nixon, Randolph, and Robinson, Parks would likely have never taken her stand, and if she had, it would never have had the same impact.
Why would anybody have a tribute to racism?
The local black talk-radio station was talking about this today. They were highly incensed
Maybe Fiona was tired.
My opinion, it doesn't bother me that the Rosa Parks bus event was planned. It doesn't negate the good which has come out of the civil rights movement, which had a small start with Rosa Parks.
What I do find interesting is the way I remember the account being told. I was in high school in 1955. I remember hearing that because Rosa Parks was tired, she sat in the "white section" of the bus, rather than walk to the back of the bus.
Now, I understand that it didn't happen that way at all.
I have read that, in reality, Miss Parks was sitting in the "Negro section" of the bus (in the back), and a white man wanted her to give him her seat, because there were no more seats in the white section. And Rosa Parks refused to give up HER seat in the Negro section.
Do any of you have the same experience? That of not being informed of the exact facts way back there in 1955?
Not that it is important -- but it does somehow relate to how much the media can and does influence the accuracy of information.
I say "the media" because I am sure that is how my parents arrived at their information, and they imparted it to me. Of course, there was the possibility that I was told the details accurately, and in my mind, I changed the facts to match pre-conceived ideas.
Am I the only one who finds this interesting?
I thought the civil rights movement started July 4, 1776.
"...I'm waiting for the "symbolic" rap tune that thanks Whitey for dying to free the Black...."
Does one exist?
Now, that is wierd. That is really a slanted version. That a young negro woman would sit in the lap of a white man on the bus because she was too tired to walk to the back of the bus.
Where did you live (what part of the country) in 1955?
I wonder how many other "versions" were put out there!!
The chances are slim to none....and Slim left town.
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