Actually, she didn’t sit down in the front of the bus at all. She refused to give up her seat (in the colored section) to a white man. And yeah, it was probably premeditated. But that doesn’t make it any less important.
You are not correct and this is somewhat inappropriate in this thread, please read the CNN article or the wikipedia entry.
In summary she was in the back of the bus (you know the black section).
The bus was filled and a white man demanded she give up he seat.
She refused and was arrested for it.
Please leave arguments on whether it was planned for another thread.
No matter what, she helped change America in a positive way.
Thank you
Jim Franchi
There is a documentary about Rosa parks that everybody should see if you get the chance. It would be better if I knew the name of it :smack:, I might be able to find it or somebody else could know.
It is very odd being a white person and watching that film but under the race issue there is a very strong American spirit story. I’ll never know what is was to be black in those times but I had a strong reaction to the resilience people showed when they boycotted the busses. The way they carried themselves when walking places and the “stick together” efforts it took to organize the car rides…AMAZING. It shows in the pictures that they had a real sense of what was going on and the place in history they were part of.
The pictures, sound clips and video of the people walking, the radio dj’s telling people where to go for rides, and the funniest thing people waiting at the bus stop and simply waving and smiling at the bus drivers but not getting on.
All sparked by one woman that had seen enough, had enough, and said enough is enough setting change into motion.
R.I.P. Rosa Parks.
You made a mark and left the world a better place…good job. 
Just to clarify nothing, the New York Times this morning said that she was NOT a plant.
There was no reason at all for her to do what she did, endure what she endured, sacrifice what she gave up, and abide for another half-century the snubs she quietly tolerated from both sides of the civil rights movement (Zoe will be much more eloquent on this subject than I).
Except that it was the right thing to do.
God bless Rosa Parks, and may a host of angels welcome her into Heaven. And, speaking as an agnostic, may there be a heaven, at least for people like her.
Why do you guys have to taint this thread with claims of her being a “plant”? Does it matter? Really, in a memorial thread for a great American, why do you whether by design or accident reduce her contribution to this country?
Shame.
Don’t know who you’re talking to, but I for one certainly wasn’t trying to reduce her contribution at all. It’s still OK to correct errors, I hope? I was just responding to someone who said she was in the white section - she wasn’t. And apparently, the claim that she was a “plant” (that sounds too negative anyway) is a dubious one. Fair enough, either way it doesn’t take away the significance of the event.
She also was denied the right to vote because the voter registration authority said that she had failed her literacy test. She made another attempt at the test and copied down her answers so that she could protest if they denied her right to vote again.
There’s a woman who stood up for herself, and good for her.
The “planned” component as I understand it:
The unfairness of the Montgomery bus system was something the NAACP (in which Rosa was active) had planned to challenge for a while. The Montgomery buses had movable sign that hooked onto a seat and read COLORED- black people (and Indians, Mexicans, etc.) sat behind that sign. If there were more white people on the bus than usual the driver would move the sign farther back so that all white people could sit down (never mind that several blacks might be standing).
A young black girl was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat when the driver moved the COLORED sign back. The NAACP considered taking action on the case, but the girl was about 15, the mother of one out of wedlock child and pregnant with another- they figured, almost 100% certainly correctly, that such a case would only fuel the fires of the bigots (“Look at her… milking our welfare for those bastard babies…” etc.) so they decided to pass.
Enter Rosa Parks- law abiding, well spoken, had no scandals or out-of-wedlock children (no children at all for that matter). She did not get onto the bus with the intention of starting a movement, but she was as tired as anybody who had worked all day (as a seamstress in a department store). She walked into the front section of the bus like all blacks did, paid her fare, then stepped off (like all blacks did) and around to the back entrance and sat in the front row behind the COLORED sign. She paid exactly the same fare as the white passenger who got on.
My understanding from several sources is that the white passenger was not insistent on her surrendering her seat, but the busdriver was. He moved the COLORED sign behind Rosa and ordered her to move (there was no more seating- she’d have had to stood). Then, to quote Eddie from Barbershop, “Rosa Parks sat her black ass down”. Did she know that the NAACP would use her as a catalyst? Possibly- but the reason she kept her seat was that she was damned sick and tired of paying the same fare as white passengers (blacks made up the lopsided majority of bus users in Montgomery) and having to be reminded she was LITERALLY a second-class citizen and forced to stand so that somebody whose distant ancestors came from Europe rather than Africa (even more ironic since Rosa had quite a bit of white ancestry herself) could take her seat. At that moment she was practicing civil disobedience.
She didn’t get on the bus and sit in a white section, or try to force a white person to give up their seat (can you even imagine what would have happened if a black man had tried to force a white woman out of her seat?), but on a cold day in Montgomery she had enough. She may or may not have known that the NAACP would pursue the matter, but if she was assured they would she was also assured that she was about to lose her job and that she was putting her own life and that of everybody she loved in danger and that she wasn’t about to be rich and famous and universally loved (she never got rich [in fact she was almost evicted a couple of years ago, though mainly due to senility related money mismanagement] and the fame she had was life threatening for years).
So to some extent it was “planned” in that Rosa was aware that the black community wanted to challenge the bus laws as a start to a Civil Rights movement, but it does not minimize the bravery or the unfairness in the least. She was a woman with major guts.
Some ironic trivia: Angela Bassett starred in a TV movie bio of Rosa Parks a few years ago that was filmed in Montgomery in order to give it the “on location” feel. The scenes involving the bus had to be filmed in a different location than where they happened because almost nothing remains of that street that would have been there on December 1, 1955. One big reason: most of one side was torn down to build the Rosa Parks Library and Museum.
Fancy that. Consider my ignorance’s ass kicked.
Hooray, then it was worth the slight hi-jack.
By all accounts I ever read, she was a remarkable woman. What she did, really did take a lot of guts.
I wish I was a more elegant writer so I could compose a fitting eulogy, I will have to leave that for others.
Rosa Parks is another example of one person making a difference. It’s stories like hers that I will teach my children, showing them that it is in fact possible…although at times difficult.
She body may be gone, but b/c of her actions - her sprirt will live on forever.
There’s a difference between being aware of the act you’re going to do and the results thereof and doing it anyway and premeditating, setting up or planning an act at urging of others.
I don’t know how thin that difference is considering the bravery either act would require, but I do know her detractors made it point to spin the act into one of deliberate rebel rousing at the urging of others in order to diminish her braverly…so I may have over-reacted when I noticed a good portion of these responses included, “even though it was ‘planned’ or was a setup…” It just rubbed me the wrong way, you know?
An even better one would be St. Peter saying, “sorry you had it all wrong” and escorting her to a separate Black Heaven.
I think you need to explain that one. It sounds very racist the way I read it.
Not the least bit funny. What was your intent.
Oh totally. As I mentioned earlier, there are southerners who to this day have an asterix by Rosa Parks’ name (“of course that whole thing was a set-up”) who seem to have no appreciation of the fact that IF Rosa had walked onto the bus with the express purpose of sitting in the white section, she still shouldn’t have been arrested. (The other irritating southern comment I’ve heard several times [always from white people] is “I’ll admit, things were bad for the blacks… but they were happier then…”.)
This is the first I’d heard that this was a “plant,” or at the very least, Rosa knew the NAACP was itching for an opportunity to take a stand over this hideous law.
Do we know the names of the busdriver and the white passenger? Are they still alive? Did they ever express an opinion over their part in this historic event?
I don’t think there’s a difference at all, and if I were to have to select a difference, I would say that premeditating an act requires more courage. That’s all I was trying to emphasize in my post. Either way, she’s given us all an example to live up to.
Why? Say I know I have the support of lawyers, of money, of the press, why it be more courageous to risk myself with some support, than just sitting on bus alone in my defiance, with the possibly of arrest, violence or worst with NO support?
Look I’m gonna bow out, 'cause I don’t want to contribute to the highjack, and clearly this has touched a cord with me. I simply felt there was no need for the * Sampiro noted, to her memorial thread as a. they weren’t true and b. were the same language used by those who would reduce her.
YMMV, of course.
Here you go. Also from the NYT, which I should’ve just linked to earlier (this is on the second page):