The first time I met Rosa Parks was at a luncheon in the spring of 1988. We posed for a group photo after she handed me a certificate commemorating the scholarship I had been awarded from the foundation established by The Detroit News and the Detroit Public Schools in her name. In a sign of the times, that $2,000 paid almost one third of my freshman year tuition at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, the alma mater of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. At Morehouse, I was challenged to work harder than my competitors, question established conventions and reach for the highest goals. It was that encouragement that helped me in a career that has taken me from the west side of Detroit to four other continents, working for a President of the United States, members of congress and corporate executives.
When I heard that Mrs. Parks died, I noticed a trend in the the articles about her life that made me go back and begin looking through old books and articles to refresh my memory about her contributions. After examining the facts of the era in books like John Hope Franklin's From Slavery to Freedom and Alton Hornsby's Chronology of African American History it became clear that although Mrs. Parks is commonly heralded as the Mother of the modern Civil Rights Movement, that description is not accurate. A more apt description may be “the Mid-Wife” of the movement as the forces of change that she jump started with her heroic act were already in full motion before that day in 1955 when she refused to move to the back of the bus.
In fact it was the circumstances leading up to and including World War II that gave birth to what we describe as the modern Civil Rights Movement. Historical scholars may still disagree and trace the roots back to the agitation begun by Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois and the founders of the NAACP and other groups from earlier in the century. However, if there was a “Mother of the Movement,” it was the pain and adjustment the country went through as it prepared for and fought World War II when the contradictions of segregation began to be challenged regularly (and successfully) by America's darker citizens.
The first victory of the movement came in 1941 with the signing of Executive Order 8802 by President Franklin Roosevelt, which banned racial and religious discrimination in defense industries and government programs. FDR followed that with the establishment of the Fair Employment Practices Committee to monitor implementation of the order. Both of these actions were in response to labor leader A. Phillip Randolph's threat to March on Washington with 150,000 “negroes,” which would have been a threat to internal order and an embarrassment to the United States on the eve of a war to liberate Europe.
Those acts by FDR and the necessity of black labor in war industries had amazing consequences. Many black men and women were able to assume jobs they were unable to fill previously and more relocated from the segregated south to the north following employment opportunities. This influx of black workers led to an outbreak of racial conflicts in northern cities, the most explosive being a riot involving hundred of blacks and whites in Detroit in 1943. The expenditure of federal money in support of the war caused blacks to agitate for more resources forcing local and federal governments to respond to keep tempers cooled. The Pittsburgh Courier launched the “Double V” campaign to achieve victory at home for “negroes” and abroad for America. Even the Red Cross came under attack for separating black and white blood used to treat wounded soldiers.
The years following World War II saw many more tests of acceptance. Serving abroad in the conflict introduced mass numbers of black men to the more tolerant racial customs of Europe that had been attracting the black elite to the Continent for years. Watching their fellow soldiers die, fighting for their country abroad against the racist Nazi regime and coming home to segregation forced many to question the predicament of their own treatment with new vigor. Most Americans have heard of the Freedom Rides of the 1960s, however the first Freedom Rides actually began in 1947 when the Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) began to test the Supreme court ban on segregation in interstate travel from the previous year. After establishing a commission to investigate discrimination, President Truman signed executive orders requiring fair employment in the federal workforce and integrating units of the armed forces.
There were many more small and large acts of defiance and progress by black and white citizens alike during the post-war years. Following the passage of the GI Bill in 1944, providing money for soldiers to attend university as they adjusted to life back at home, some southern colleges and universities began admitting black students. Then in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that racial discrimination in public schools was unconstitutional after a series of cases that had chipped away at the “separate but equal” standard upheld by Plessey v. Ferguson in 1896.
Clearly, by the time Rosa Parks refused to move her seat on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott that launched the civil rights career of Martin Luther King, Jr. America had already been in the throes of a racial revolution. Her act was pivotal in focusing national attention on the struggle for freedom and full American citizenship an increasingly affluent and educated black population desired. For her heroism she deserves the honored place she has in our history, but we can not forget the thousands of others who tested the boundaries of America's conscience in the decades before.
Too often we teach our young people about larger than life figures who perform larger than life acts that change the course of history. At times, the grandiose nature of those figures makes having an impact on the world seem out of reach to a small child. The Rosa Parks story, like those of the many others who came before her, speaks up for the seemingly small act that each of us can perform that may have an impact that none of us can ever predict. That impact may even include something as simple as sending a young boy from the west side of Detroit off to school to become a man ready to face the world.
Thank you.