Celebrating 60 years of Rosa Parks

It is 60 years almost to the day that a seamstress and local Black activist from Montgomery, Alabama would embark on a chain of events that would change the world.

When Rosa Parks decided on Dec 1st 1955 not to give up her seat for a white person knowing that she would be arrested I wonder if she knew then that her singular act of bravery would spawn great leaders such Dr Martin Luther King jr, and a momentous Civil Rights movement that would transform the US and beyond.

Parks was not the first to defy the Montgomery bus racist laws, but the local chapter of the NAACP, felt in Parks, they could galvanise a people to crush the demeaning laws.

Although many people, particularly school children all over the world, know and love the Rosa Parks story, few really understand the enormity of the bus boycott that followed Park’s arrest and the human cost of that Black struggle which gave political birth to a young Minster who was barely out of college finishing his PHD, Dr Martin Luther King.

In fact it is his book ‘Great Stride to Freedom: The Montgomery Story', that is my bible for activism that I hold dear to this very day.

When we think of boycotting something it is usually a short sharp statement that includes doing without some food, clothing or newspaper that invariable causes the boycotter no harm and little or no discomfort. The Montgomery bus boycott was very, very different.

Black people needed the Montgomery buses as their life line to get to work. No transport, no work, no work, no food. Undertaking this hardship was not for a day or week, but for over a year. In order for the boycott to work the movement had to organise transport for thousands of people on a daily basis. Individuals were beaten by racist thugs, the KKK fire bombed activist homes including Dr King and his young family.

The biggest challenge which most interested me alongside the basic organising of such a boycott was how the movement had to deal with those Black people who would sell the movement out at the drop of a hat, and over a long period of time.

Today we celebrate Rosa Park’s courage for standing tall against the evil of racism, but her defiance must be put into context of what the movement in Montgomery, Alabama achieved during that very painful year of the bus boycott.

If you want to celebrate Parks today do so by buying King’s book. If you already have it, buy it for a friend or relative, and perhaps write inside, ‘With Love, be inspired’...

Simon Woolley