It must really suck to look into the mirror every day and hate who you see!
Posted on 03/28/2006 10:16:54 AM PST by 2banana
Opinion
Did Rosa Parks pardon Alabama?
By Leonard Pitts Jr.
Sometimes, I wonder about the white man. That's all the identification history has ever given him. We know the name of the man who was driving the bus that evening: James F. Blake. We know the names of the Montgomery, Ala., policemen who answered Blake's summons after a "colored" passenger refused to surrender her seat: Officers Mixon and Day. And, of course, we know the name of the passenger: Rosa Parks.
But the past has closed like muddy water around the identity of "the white man" whose arrival on the bus precipitated Parks' arrest that December night a little over 50 years ago. I've read reconstructions of the arrest, studied contemporaneous news accounts, looked at the police report. But I've never seen his name.
I've always been curious, though, always wondered who he was and what he felt that night the 20th century turned, as if on a hinge. Was he a fire-breathing segregationist, mortally affronted by the nerve of this tiny colored woman in wanting to keep her seat? Was he just some guy who accepted the privileges the law conferred upon him without thinking much about right or wrong? Was he a man who saw segregation for the idiocy it was, but kept quiet, didn't rock the boat because what could he do, one man against The Way Things Were?
There's a lawmaker in Alabama who wants the state to pardon Rosa Parks for violating The Way Things Were. State Rep. Thad McClammy, a black Democrat from Montgomery, has sponsored a bill that would excuse Parks and perhaps hundreds of other blacks who violated Alabama's segregation laws. People who had the temerity to sit where they were not supposed to sit, enter public doors they were not allowed to enter, drink at fountains from which they were forbidden to drink, would be officially forgiven by the state.
The idea has engendered a lively debate.
A recent Associated Press report quotes a woman who was arrested in 1951 after going to the front of the bus to request a transfer. She approves of the proposal because her conviction has caused her difficulty over the years when she applied for government jobs. On the other hand, the pastor of Parks' old church wants to know why people who protested unjust laws need pardoning.
It's a good question. I don't question the noble intentions of those who support this legislation. I can appreciate the inconvenience - and embarrassment - a law-abiding person feels at having a conviction on her record. Even a conviction that cost only a $10 fine half a century ago. But I wonder if the supporters of this bill truly appreciate the moral implications of what they are asking. You only need to be excused, forgiven, pardoned, when you've done wrong. And while it's true that Parks and others did break the law, that's not the same as doing wrong.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was fond of proclaiming that under an unjust law, the only place for a just man was jail. I believe it was also King who pointed out that everything Adolf Hitler did was legal, but none of it was right.
Maybe "the white man" knew all that. Maybe that's why he disappeared so readily into anonymity. Maybe he understood that he was law-abiding, but also wrong - symbol of a rotting system at worst, moral coward at best.
By contrast, look at the mug shot of Rosa Parks taken during the bus boycott touched off by her arrest. You can search it out at Wikipedia.com. Her gaze is level and direct, her expression one of calm resolve. Hers is not the face of a woman embarrassed or plagued by doubt. Rather, what you see in that picture is a woman who is at peace, having finally taken a momentous step. Which is why it's irrelevant whether Alabama pardons her. The real question is, did she ever pardon Alabama?
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Leonard Pitts Jr. (lpitts@miamiherald.com) is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
Sometimes I wonder about the white man too.
I wonder about the 500,000 mostly white men of the Union Army who perished in the Civil War. I wonder if their deeds and heroism will be forgotten in the freeing of the black man.
I also wonder about the white men in the white churches of the North and South who started and grew the abolitionist movement into a nationwide crusade. I wonder if their works will ever be remembered in any text book.
But mostly I wonder about American journalists who want to divide the American people along racial or ethnic lines for their own twisted purposes and the newspapers who continue to publish their perverse views.
Regards,
2banana
Well said.
The gentlemen and ladies convicted of violating what were later recognized to be unjust laws should receive a blanket pardon.
Pardon isn't exactly the right word, as it implies receipt of forgiveness for committing a wrong, which they did not do.
In any case, the conviction should be removed from their record, along with a written apology that we ever had such evil laws.
(Apology to those actually injured by the law, not to all those who happen to share superficial characteristics such as skin color or other markings of ethnicity.)
Yawn. Let the dead rest.
Maybe my memory is faulty, but I read somewhere that the white man, was willing to stand and told the bus driver that he had no problems doing so. It was the busdriver who insisted Rosa Parks had to stand.
If so, I don't think the man in question deserves the scorn Pitts (who's usually better than this) is pouring on him.
Amazing how sitting in a different seat on a bus can make you a national hero. Such brilliance, accomplishment and lifetime of effort is unparalleled.
It must really suck to look into the mirror every day and hate who you see!
These are the kooks who stage mock trials to put "the man" on trial.
Just like the europeans recently tried GWBush for war crimes.
What are you trying to say, exactly?
Amazing how sitting in a different seat on a bus can make you a national hero. Such brilliance, accomplishment and lifetime of effort is unparalleled.
_______________
You're right. We should have left well enough alone, kept the black folk at the back of the bus, giving up their seats to whatever white person needed it. How uppity of them. /contemptuous sarcasm
A quick google search confirmed that the mysterious 'white man' didn't demand a seat, but the bus driver insisted the black people move. Not only that, but Parks was bailed out by the Durr's, a white couple.
"... the white man was willing to stand and told the bus driver that he had no problems doing so."
Under the Montgomery city ordinance, the standing white man was *required* to take the seat that Parks was asked to vacate, when ordered to do so by the bus driver. This same ordinance also *required* the bus driver to demand that Parks vacate her seat. So, the racist ordinance had the potential to make the white passenger a criminal, for a simple act of courtesy to a (black) woman *or* to make the bus driver a criminal for not making Parks move and the white passenger take her seat.
It is a bit of an overplay.
I never implied any of what you insinuate and I certainly don't believe it. I just think the Rosa Parks thing as national hero is a bit of an overplay.
Incidentally, the same issue continues today but it has a different name, it is called affirmative action, set asides, and race-based scholarships (not bus seats) reserved for selected races while others are excluded (not from bus seats).
This issue itself should have been over with a long time ago.
This idea of issueing pardons, without consideration of the persons wishes smacks of condesention.
Reminds me of the hypocracy of that pork project that they wanted to name after Reagan in california.
If you ever want to have some fun, read both Thomas Sowell (articles and some speeches on the same topic) about who the first folks were to fight against the segregations laws, how they were imposed and how the political campaigns in favor on them were slanted.
Almost every single lesson of it applies today and all the same tactics are used across the board today on various policies.
When he write: "Was he a fire-breathing segregationist, mortally affronted by the nerve of this tiny colored woman in wanting to keep her seat? Was he just some guy who accepted the privileges the law conferred upon him without thinking much about right or wrong? Was he a man who saw segregation for the idiocy it was, but kept quiet, didn't rock the boat because what could he do, one man against The Way Things Were?"
How about the man was someone who tried to do the right thing -- let Parks keep her seat -- and when he couldn't chose to disappear into anonymity, rather than take a place in the spotlight?
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