Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African American civil rights activist and seamstress whom the U.S. Congress dubbed the "Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement". She is best remembered for her refusal on December 1, 1955 to obey bus driver James Blake's demand that she relinquish her seat so a white man could sit in the row.

I'd see the bus pass every day... But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world.

We didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down.

God has always given me the strength to say what is right... I had the strength of God and my ancestors with me.

Quotes

• People always said that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
  • Rosa Parks: My Story, p. 116, Rosa Parks and James Haskins (1992)

• I did not want to be mistreated, I did not want to be deprived of a seat that I had paid for. It was just time... there was an opportunity for me to take a stand to express the way I felt about being treated in that manner. I had not planned to get arrested. I had plenty to do without having to end up in jail. But when I had to face that decision, I didn't hesitate to do so because I felt that we had endured that too long. The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became.
  • "Parks Recalls Bus Boycott, Excerpts from an interview with Lynn Neary", National Public Radio (1992), linked at "Civil Rights Icon Rosa Parks Dies", NPR, October 25, 2005.

• Thank you very much. I honor my late husband Raymond Parks, other Freedom Fighters, men of goodwill who could not be here. I'm also honored by young men who respect me and have invited me as an elder. Raymond, or Parks as I called him, was an activist in the Scottsboro Boys case, voter registration, and a role model for youth. As a self-taught businessman, he provided for his family, and he loved and respected me. Parks would have stood proud and tall to see so many of our men uniting for our common man and committing their lives to a better future for themselves, their families, and this country. Although criticism and controversy has been focused on in the media instead of benefits for the one million men assembling peacefully for spiritual food and direction, it is a success. I pray that my multiracial and international friends will view this [some audio unclear] gathering as an opportunity for all men but primarily men of African heritage to make changes in their lives for the better. I am proud of all groups of people who feel connected with me in any way, and I will always work for human rights for all people. However, as an African American woman, I am proud, applaud, and support our men in this assembly. I would a lot like to have male students of the Pathways to Freedom to join me here and wave their hands, but I don't think they're here right now. But thank you all young men of the Pathways to Freedom. Thank you and God bless you all. Thank you.
  • Rosa Park speech to social activists assembled in Washington, D.C. (1995))

• I did not get on the bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home.
  • Quoted in Rita Dove, "Rosa Parks: Her simple act of protest galvanized America's civil rights revolution," Time (1999-06-14)

• I'd see the bus pass every day... But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world.
  • Quoted in The Story Behind the Bus. Rosa Parks Bus. The Henry Ford. Retrieved on 2008-07-01. (2002)

• We didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down.
  • Quoted in "Standing Up for Freedom," Academy of Achievement.org (2005-10-31)

• I do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day, but I don't think there is anything such as complete happiness. It pains me that there is still a lot of Klan activity and racism. I think when you say you're happy, you have everything that you need and everything that you want, and nothing more to wish for. I haven't reached that stage yet.
  • Quoted in "Standing Up for Freedom," Academy of Achievement.org (2005-10-31)

• God has always given me the strength to say what is right... I had the strength of God and my ancestors with me.
  • Quoted in The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, by Jeanne Theoharis (2013)

• From my upbringing and the Bible I learned people should stand up for rights just as the children of Israel stood up to the Pharaoh.
  • Quoted in The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, by Jeanne Theoharis (2013)

• I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.
  • Quoted in "Women of the Hall: Rosa Parks," Women's National Hall of Fame (undated); said upon her 77th birthday (1990-02-04)

Quiet Strength (2000)

Quiet Strength : the Faith, the Hope, and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation, by Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed (2000)

• Every day before supper and before we went to services on Sundays my grandmother would read the Bible to me, and my grandfather would pray. We even had devotions before going to pick cotton in the fields. Prayer and the Bible, became a part of my everyday thoughts and beliefs. I learned to put my trust in God and to seek Him as my strength.

• Since I have always been a strong believer in God, I knew that He was with me, and only He could get me through that next step.

• I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.

Quotes about Rosa Parks

• when we focus our attention on the southern struggles of the 1950s and '60s, specifically when we think about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, we inevitably evoke Dr. Martin Luther King. We also think about Rosa Parks, but we should be focusing on Jo Ann Robinson as well, who wrote the book The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It. As many times as I've spoken during Black History Month, I never tire of urging people to remember that it wasn't a single individual or two who created that movement, that, as a matter of fact, it was largely women within collective contexts, Black women, poor Black women who were maids, washerwomen, and cooks. These were the people who collectively refused to ride the bus.
  • Angela Y. Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle (2015)

• In the end, I knew I had done the right thing by coming out of the closet. Sure, it's risky, even frightening. But people like Rosa Parks and so many others-faced far more dangers in their efforts to rid our society of unjust laws. Knowing that I had benefited directly from their gallant efforts, my decision was simple. Remaining in the closet about my drug use felt cowardly, dishonorable.
  • Carl Hart Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear (2021)

• What would we in this country know about civil disobedience had Rosa Parks not refused to give up a seat she had a right to? (And what do we know about it now that anti-abortion people are using our tactics?) We learn through doing. Bernice Johnson Reagon has said we're stumbling because we have to take the next step.
  • Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz "The Next Step: Coalition Building in the Nineties'" in The Issue is Power (1992)

• She sparked a prairie fire that continues to blaze brightly in the hearts of freedom-loving people in all nations; and the non-violent revolution she set in motion continues to reverberate in nation after nation as an inspiration to human liberation movements everywhere. Rosa Parks provided us with a beautiful example of the power of one. How one courageous person can make a great difference in advancing human freedom. She showed us the power of humility and disciplined nonviolence in winning hearts and minds to support our freedom struggle; and she set for the entire world a vibrant example of African American womanhood fully engaged in the work of building a more just and decent society. b king
  • Bernice King, Remarks at the funeral of Rosa Parks (2 November 2005)

• Mrs. Rosa Parks is a very fine person. And, since it had to happen, I'm happy that it happened to a person like Mrs. Parks, for nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her integrity. Nobody can doubt the height of her character nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus. And I'm happy since it had to happen, it happened to a person that nobody can call a disturbing factor in the community. Mrs. Parks is a fine Christian person, unassuming, and yet there is integrity and character there. And just because she refused to get up, she was arrested.
  • Martin Luther King Jr.; Montgomery Bus Boycott speech, at Holt Street Baptist Church (5 December 1955).

• Actually, no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.'
  • Martin Luther King Jr.; A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. by James M. Washington (1991)

• Rosa Parks dreams about/a bus in Jerusalem.
  • E Ethelbert Miller poem fragment from How we sleep on the nights we don't make love (2004)

• One element of imperial history is that events tend to be seen as caused by extraordinary personalities acting on one another without showing us the social roots and contexts of those actions. For example, many of the great discoveries and inventions we are taught about in elementary and high school were being pursued by many people at once, but the individual who received the patent is described as a lone explorer rather than part of a group effort. Rosa Parks didn't "get tired" one day and start the Montgomery bus boycott. She was a trained organizer, and her role, as well as the time and place of the boycott, was the result of careful planning by a group of civil rights activists. Just as medicinal history must restore individuality to anonymous masses of people, it must also restore social context to individuals singled out as the actors of history.
  • Aurora Levins Morales Medicine Stories: Essays for Radicals (2019 edition)

• Then, as now, getting arrested or jailed or associated with criminality in any fashion, whether in a hoodie or a suit and tie, was bound to upset the political establishment. When Black Lives Matter activists blocked traffic and engaged in other acts of mass civil disobedience, many white liberals and older black activists charged that King wouldn’t have approved of the type of disruption these protests caused. While the likes of King and Rosa Parks are now celebrated for their acts of defiance, their protests were no less controversial at the time, even within the civil-rights movement.
  • Bree Newsome "The Civil-Rights Movement’s Generation Gap" article in The Atlantic (2018)