Yes, the very discussion happening in this thread is a good discussion that should be happening in the class. Suggestion: Print out this thread and take it to the teacher, with that suggestion.
I might. Better yet the article I linked to above about the 15 year old girl. It gives alot of background into the issue such as discussions back and forth between the city and the bus company and even she mentions another woman who did the same as Parks but yet, didnt get the recognition.
Thats basically what I told him. Maybe in a class when he’s older where they go deeper into history than just skimming over things, will he be able to discuss things openly.
That had alot to do with it. Who goes to bat for a teenager anyways? Remember this was the 50’s and the new era of teen rebellion.
There was also the fact that the NAACP and other groups didnt have the infrastructure ready to handle a boycott like an alternative way to get people to work.
A high school history class isn’t designed to get into the nuances. At that level, the big picture is much more important.
But I really don’t think it is fair or necessary to dull the luster on Rosa Parks as a historical figure when discussing the nuances of the Civil Rights Movement. What she did WAS brave, because regardless of how light her skin was or how much money she had in her pocketbook, she still willingly subjected herself to a violent, unjust oppressive criminal justice system for a cause much bigger than herself. Under Apartheid America, anything was possible. She could have gotten a billy club upside her head. She could have been thrown in jail and denied bail or access to a lawyer. The racist press could have ginned up a lie about her to sully her reputation. The NAACP could have suddenly changed course, deciding the whole bus thing wasn’t the mountain it wanted to die on. The KKK could have terrorized her and her family and ordered a hit on her. There was no reason for her to assume that these pitfalls would not happen. Plus, I think she deserves props because she WAS middle-class. Most of the people willing to put their neck out for the civil rights movement were young and/or poor–people with little to lose. She did have a lot to lose, though. Not just in the eyes of the white folk, but also other “respectable” black folks.
History is full of figures who are revered for their bravery, but upon closer inspection, they don’t seem all that awesome. I don’t think there’s anything about Rosa Parks that justifies singling her out.
Quite the contrary; I think that Parks knowingly and deliberately choosing to make herself a test case, with the full expectation that she would be arrested or worse, makes her a more heroic figure than if she had just gotten fed up one day without thinking through the implications.
Who are you answering? If it’s monstro, you need to read more than the last line.
I guess I am aware of many cases where a student relays a classroom situation back to the parent that is quite different than the actual incident that happened.
Yes. Thank you. That is exactly the point.
I suppose that’s possible. Since the OP didn’t mention any consequences resulting from the incident I don’t really see why his son would have to make something up though.
Who cares if Rosa Parks was one cog in the machine? What heroes weren’t? I mean, Abraham Lincoln, some president someday was going to abolish slavery, what’s the big deal? Besides, Abe had a lot of support and there were other opponents of slavery before him.
Rosa Parks willingly subjected herself to arrest in a racist environment. That takes bravery, I don’t care if others had done it without the fanfare.
I’m gonna have to cosign with all of this.
It took a great deal of bravery to resist a policy like this one. It was brave precisely because, for an act so trivial when you take at it face value, it came at humongous costs. How easy would it have been for Mrs. Parks to simply get up out of her seat and move to the back like thousands of others had done before her? Extremely easy. This is one of those actions that any well-meaning parent would instruct their children to do, all for the purpose of avoiding trouble. But Rosa Parks refused to do this very simple thing with the full knowledge that she would likely go to jail and be publically excoriated over it.
I know very few non-rebel rousing, average citizens that are capable of this type of activism now, let alone during the days when the KKK was active and blatant. It’s really easy to think–with hindsight being 20/20–that it wasn’t so difficult to do. But you’re talking about someone who, despite being treated like a second class citizen all of her life, very elegantly defied an entire system of oppression with no guarantee this choice wouldn’t cost her life or those of her loved ones.
Obviously, she was but one small part in a larger picture of resistance. But without her doing what she did–and most importantly, being the cornerstone in the community that she was–it’s unlikely the Alabama Bus Boycott would have succeeded like it did. This was no small potatoes.
I’m giving the OP’s son some leeway due to his youth to mean that he didn’t see Rosa Parks as the only or most heroic person involved. I like to use the concept of ‘nobility of spirit’ to define heroes, she had that, as did others. I hope I’d have that kind of courage in such a situation.
Teachers hate students who are ‘ahead of the class’.
Your son’s comments and understanding are too advanced for ninth grade.
This is another “The Civil War was about Slavery” item. There is much deeper analysis possible, but not for grade school.
Simple black-and-white issues are the norm in grade school.
(in Presidential Elections, there might be room for advanced discussion)
Well, clinging to a fantasy “lone heroic figure” version of history makes it more difficult to understand the actual forces that drive change, and thus less able to induce similar change in the future.
There’s certainly no shortage of poorly-organized youth who seem to not understand why their causes don’t get much traction. I don’t know if a more accurate view of history would have helped, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt.
I think the conclusion here isn’t that Rosa Parks wasn’t awesome, but that we shouldn’t forget all the other awesome people that backed her up, and that all those other people were absolutely necessary to effect real change.
More accurately, she was part of a planned event and was chosen to best represent the cause. She is literally the face of the movement by design. When discussing her I think it’s relevant to mention those who helped put it all together. Otherwise it gives a false impression of the proverbial lone person standing in front of tanks in singular defiance when in fact it was many people standing up for their rights.
Somehow it’s the outwardly passive people who make the news and make history. The calm Rosa Parks; the passive Mohandas Gandhi. Not the belligerent, loudmouthed, ill-mannered ones.
I read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison; its theme was race relations. It seemed that the people supposedly in the forefront of the civil rights movement at the time (the late 1940s) were repudiating the notion of “responsibility”; by their reasoning, being “responsible” would inhibit their efforts to bring justice to the black man. The problem with this is that white bigots could seize on this philosophy as a justification for their racist attitudes.
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Who has called or treated her like a “lone heroic figure”? Is Rosa Parks the only figure of the civil rights movement that kids learn in school today, particularly in high school?
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Teachers should definitely teach their students that the Civil Rights Movement depended on poor people and kids to serve literally in the front lines. But they can do this without taking anything away from Rosa Parks.
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For me personally, the critical piece of the Rosa Parks “nuance” is not “let’s remember all the people who helped Rosa Parks!” It would be a horrible (and dare I say, rare) history teacher who just focuses on Parks (or MLK Jr, for that matter), and not all the other figures. The nuance also isn’t “Young people mattered too!” It is no secret that youth were crucial to the Civl Rights Movement. Lunch counter sit-ins, the school walk-outs, the kids-getting-hosed-down-the-streets-and-being attacked-by-dogs are all well-known testaments to this. You can talk about these things without downplaying the significance of Rosa Parks.
IMHO, the nuance is “The Civil Rights Movement was very deliberate and tactical. Very little about it just kinda-sorta happened. Its practitioners realized that they couldn’t have just any ole body representing the Movement, because “any ole body” might validate the prejudice and bigotry they were trying to refute. And “any ole body” wouldn’t necessarily toe the party line of non-violence and forgiveness, and it was very important that this message come across to Middle America. Thus, Rosa Parks was chosen not just because she had the requisite amount of guts, but also because she was the symbol needed to put the Movement on the national scene.”
The fact that she was “chosen” doesn’t take away her agency or her courage. It was brave for her to be associated with a radical organization like NAACP and it was brave for her to put her respectability on the line for the sake of the cause.
I live in Topeka, Kansas, as in Brown vs the Board of Education of Topeka. That was the landmark school desegregation case. Here in Topeka, it always seemed like it was a lone case, but Brown was just one of several school suits that were lumped together in the Supreme Court decision. They are the “face” of the issue because alphabetically Brown came first.
“Lone” was in the context of the bus incident specifically. Like Shodan said, the usual narrative is that Parks one day decided that enough is enough and did her thing spontaneously. In reality, it was carefully planned, and this made a significant difference in the outcome.
Yes, exactly. And that’s very much not how it’s presented, at least in the schools that I went to (and apparently several others on the thread). Instead, the message is basically “anybody can change the world if they just have enough courage and stand up for themselves”. Courage is a necessary but insufficient condition. You also need organization.
Recognizing this doesn’t take anything away from Parks unless one has a zero-sum view of history. But this can be hard to articulate. A complete view of events does appear to dilute her contribution, relatively speaking.