“Rosa Parks reminds us that there is always something we can do”, Mr. Obama said in a statement.
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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2015, in Montgomery, Ala. She counted as a personal hero Malcolm X, whose ethical standard that violence was sometimes necessary stands in stark contrast to the civil-rights movement’s historical reputation of nonviolent resistance.
Terri Lee Freeman, the president of the National Civil Rights Museum, said Parks’ legacy impacted all, especially the freedoms that young people enjoy today. Even though the Klu Klux Klan did everything they could to run his family out of town, as he says, he just couldn’t turn his back on 50,000 people.
Today marks the 60th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ decision to sit down for her rights on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, putting the effort to end segregation on a fast track.
Rosa Parks was not the first to resist segregation on buses, but hers was the case that eventually came to symbolize this phase of the civil rights struggle.
Speakers and listeners agree that the 60th anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott is about honoring the past looking to the future and relevancy, today more than ever.
The events of December 1, 1955 made Parks an worldwide icon, and brought notoriety to Martin Luther King, Jr, then a little-known minister of a church in Montgomery who would grow into one of the nation’s great civil rights leaders.
Here’s how it worked: Each bus had a “white” section in the front and a “colored” section in the rear, but the dividing line was flexible; once the “white” section filled up, black passengers were expected to give up their seats to white passengers.
In stops in the South, the Democratic presidential front-runner has been working to solidify her advantage among African-American voters.
Rosa’s actions sparked an idea in the African American community to boycott the buses.
JIM MCKNIGHT/ASSOCIATED PRESS Rosa Parks is seen in Detroit in May 1971.
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“Yes, we must strengthen that most fundamental citizenship right, the right to vote”, Clinton said. In fact, Parks had such an encounter with James Blake, the driver who told her to give up her seat, in 1943. Thousands of people walked everywhere they needed to go – sometimes for miles – rather than take municipal transportation. This new, more diverse image of Black leadership looks dramatically different from the days when Montgomery organizers wrestled with the question of what to do about Rustin. Mary Louise Smith, Aurelia Browder and Susie McDonald – who were all plaintiffs in the case that moved the U.S. Supreme Court to rule bus segregation unconstitutional – also refused to move from their seats before Parks did.
