REMEMBERING ROSA PARKS

REMEMBERING ROSA PARKS

In the tradition of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Phillis Wheatley, Ida B. Wells, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Marian Anderson, Rosa Parks would add her efforts to further civil rights for African-Americans, and indeed for all Americans, through an expression of great courage. In a simple act of nonviolent resistance in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, she would ignite a powerful protest against racial segregation in the U.S. by refusing to move to a bus's segregated seating section.

Others, like Alabama State professor Jo Ann Robinson, organized the bus boycott. Dr. Martin Luther King, then pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association and would thereafter galvanize the transformation of Montgomery. But it was Rosa Parks who would become known as “The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”

Rosa Parks would later say that she defiantly refused to give up her seat on the bus on that day because she was tired, spiritually and existentially: ”I did not want to be continually humiliated over something I had no control over: the color of my skin.”

Parks' bold witness was founded on the insights she had garnered from involvement in the N.A.A.C.P., through training she had received at Highlander Folk School, and by long years of practicing her deep Christian faith. As a child, each day, before supper, there would be daily devotions, with her grandmother reading the Bible and her grandfather praying. Her mother also played a strong part in her faith development, tendering simple, practicable guidance. Chief among the adages she learned from her mother was the proverbial wisdom of ”If you live life yard by yard, it sure is hard. But if you live it inch by inch, life's a cinch.”

Parks maintained all through her life that the book of Psalms was her favorite book in the Bible, particularly Psalm 27:1-7. Among her favorite hymns were ”Woke Up This Morning With My Mind Stayed on Jesus;” “I Am Bound for the Promised Land;” “O Freedom Over Me.”

For Rosa Park the church was the foundation of her community, as it had been for countless other African-Americans for centuries. In the church, she found refuge, inspiration, information, haven, and life-giving sustenance. Meeting, praying, singing, reading Scripture, helping others, giving testimony, connecting with her Creator in intimate communion, organizing for the betterment of the community – all these provided the strength she needed to resist hatred, violence, and injustice.

-- Bob Hill

[Excerpted from LOVE ALL WAYS, Caroline Street Press, forthcoming in 2022.]