ROSA PARKS

by MONITOR
IT may come as a shock to some to realise that a woman who died in the United States on Monday aged 92 had as recently as 50 years ago been a victim of the segration laws which made black people second–class citizens in many parts of the Deep South. The story of Rosa Park has been told many times, but it is worth recounting once more. In December 1955 she was travelling on a bus in the town of Montgomery, ALabama, when the driver told her to give up her seat to a white man who would otherwise have to stand. She refused and the driver told her he would call the police and have her arrested. “You may do that” she replied. From this small incident the intensification of the campaign for black equality with white throughout the United States grew to the point that it became irresistible. It happened that the newly appointed pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Chuirch in Montgomery was Dr Martin Luther King and his campaigning over the Rosa Park incident led to his emergence as a national leader. In his book Stride Towards Freedom Dr King wrote: “Actually, no one can understand the action of Mrs Parks unless he realises that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.*” Speaking about Mrs Park's death from South Africa, the Rev Jesse Jackson said, “She sat down in order that we might stand up. Paradoxically, her imprisonment opened the door for our long journey to freedom.” Blacks boycotted Mongomery's buses for almost a year until the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public buses was illegal. It was, in a way, a minor legal decision but from it came the fundamental change that culminated in President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Civil Right Act.