We often see Rosa Parks presented as an unassuming woman who simply had enough and courageously took matters into her own hands on that fateful day in 1955. While the importance and magnitude of her actions can’t be understated, it’s also clear that Rosa was a much more complex and interesting character than the prevailing mythology would have us believe. On the Media recently unpacked the myth quite nicely. Some highlights…
- Rosa was best friend of and secretary for E.D. Nixon, the most significant black political figure in Montgomery and head of the NAACP at the time of the boycott.
- Rosa had been an activist for 13-14 years and routinely defied segregation on buses prior to her arrest.
- Several other black women had been arrested on busses within the year prior to Rosa’s arrest but they weren’t quite right for having a boycott around. Black leaders were waiting for just the right person.
- In the late 1960s, Rosa became a black nationalist and was a great admirer of Malcolm X. Among other things, she delivered the eulogy at black power icon Robert F. Williams’ funeral.
- Rosa said in her autobiography that she never believed in non-violence and she, in fact, kept guns in her home to protect her family.
Not quite the quiet librarian folks seem to want to remember, was she? The popular media stuck with the party line (more seamstress, less activist) in its obituaries, though. Perhaps they feel writing these facts could be perceived as an attempt to cheapen her legacy? Speaking on OTM, Tim Tyson had another take:
I think for some reason we are unwilling to honor people who are politically active. We want to honor people who just have had enough and sort of spontaneously won’t take it any more. But somehow if they get categorized as active citizens, which would be a positive way of saying it, as troublemakers ? which is the way we often think about such persons ? then somehow it becomes self-serving, part of a movement which we’re less comfortable with [...] You may have noticed we don’t have a lot of pacifist white heroes. We prefer our black people meek and mild, I think.
It makes sense that something of a myth was allowed to develop around Rosa in order to pack the most front page wallop. But it also makes sense that the real person be revealed at some point. Perhaps now we can begin to fill in more dimensions of the astonishing person Ms. Parks was. As I see it, her story is inspiring either way but, as usual, truth is both more complex and more inspiring than fiction.
For more on myth construction as well as fascinating background on the real Rosa Parks, visit onthemedia.org
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Aka: SHE WAS OVERRATED
Saying she’s overrated is one way to look at it, but I think it is more complicated than that. Personally, I find it interesting to simply have a deeper understanding of who Rosa really was vs. what the media and activist groups chose to play up. I don’t think that diminishes her accomplishments, but rather allows us to see her less on a pedestal and more as a real flesh and blood person who accomplished amazing things in her life. What we miss in hero worship is the many other people who also sacrificed for the cause, and perhaps that’s what you allude to. But saying that Rosa was not alone is not the same as saying what she did wasn’t important.