Remembering Rosa Parks

dirty · Oct 26, 2005

Rosa!

Oct 26, 2005
by Linda Chavez ( bio | archive | contact )
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Few people in history can claim to have truly changed the world, and even fewer by one simple act. But Rosa Parks, who died this week at 92, did just that. On Dec. 1, 1955, she boarded a bus in Montgomery, Ala., and helped launch a revolution against bigotry and ignorance by refusing to yield her seat to a white man. She later said she was tired -- not physically so much as weary of putting up with second-class citizenship in a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal. Mrs. Parks' defiance was one more nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, and the United States would never be the same.
It is almost unfathomable that barely 50 years ago it was illegal in many parts of the country for blacks to sit in the front of public buses, or eat at lunch counters or drink from the same water fountains as whites. Rosa Parks' protest inspired thousands of others to engage in civil disobedience against such tyranny. Soon, blacks and whites, Christians and Jews, old and young were taking to the streets to march against injustice and demand that this nation live up to its ideals. But the modern civil rights movement began with the Montgomery bus boycott sparked by Rosa Parks.
The official penalty imposed on blacks for failing to give up their seats was a fine of $10, a substantial sum for those who could be, and were, paid less than whites -- when they weren't being denied jobs altogether. But blacks who defied the white power structure could face far worse penalties, even death. Just months before Mrs. Parks' refusal to move to the back of the bus in Alabama, young Emmett Till was lynched by a mob of white men in Mississippi. The 14-year-old's "crime" was allegedly whistling at a white girl outside a country store. An all white jury later acquitted the only two men ever prosecuted for Till's killing, although one of the men later admitted to being part of the lynch mob in a shocking expose published by Look magazine.
The day that Rosa Parks went to court to be tried for violating Montgomery's bus ordinance, 40,000 black Montgomery residents refused to ride the bus, sparking a boycott that lasted more than a year. The boycott, which established the reputation of a young black minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., only ended when the Supreme Court handed down a decision outlawing segregation on public buses.


It took another decade before Congress acted to make racial discrimination illegal, first with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which barred discrimination in public accommodations, employment and programs that receive federal funds. In 1965, Congress prohibited discrimination in voting, making it possible for blacks in many Southern states to vote for the first time. And in 1968, Congress outlawed discrimination in housing. But in many ways, it was Rosa Parks' courage that set these events in motion.
Mrs. Parks did not remain in Alabama, moving north as so many blacks did in the '50s and '60s. She continued to work as a seamstress, later joining the Detroit office of Rep. John Conyers. In the 1990s, President Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Congress bestowed its Congressional Gold Medal. She rarely sought the limelight and wore the mantle of fame reluctantly. In her later years, she even became the victim of a vicious crime by a 28-year-old black man who broke into her apartment, beat her badly and stole $53, having no idea who she was.
But for many people -- black and white -- Rosa Parks was a hero. Her quiet dignity and strength inspired others to stand up for what they knew was right. America is a better place for Rosa Parks. She will be missed by all who value freedom.
Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a Townhall.com partner organization.

dirty · Oct 27, 2005

Columns

Rosa Parks and history

Oct 27, 2005
by Thomas Sowell ( bio | archive | contact )
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The death of Rosa Parks has reminded us of her place in history, as the black woman whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, in accordance with the Jim Crow laws of Alabama, became the spark that ignited the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Most people do not know the rest of the story, however. Why was there racially segregated seating on public transportation in the first place? "Racism" some will say -- and there was certainly plenty of racism in the South, going back for centuries. But racially segregated seating on streetcars and buses in the South did not go back for centuries.
Far from existing from time immemorial, as many have assumed, racially segregated seating in public transportation began in the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Those who see government as the solution to social problems may be surprised to learn that it was government which created this problem. Many, if not most, municipal transit systems were privately owned in the 19th century and the private owners of these systems had no incentive to segregate the races.
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These owners may have been racists themselves but they were in business to make a profit -- and you don't make a profit by alienating a lot of your customers. There was not enough market demand for Jim Crow seating on municipal transit to bring it about.
It was politics that segregated the races because the incentives of the political process are different from the incentives of the economic process. Both blacks and whites spent money to ride the buses but, after the disenfranchisement of black voters in the late 19th and early 20th century, only whites counted in the political process.
It was not necessary for an overwhelming majority of the white voters to demand racial segregation. If some did and the others didn't care, that was sufficient politically, because what blacks wanted did not count politically after they lost the vote.
The incentives of the economic system and the incentives of the political system were not only different, they clashed. Private owners of streetcar, bus, and railroad companies in the South lobbied against the Jim Crow laws while these laws were being written, challenged them in the courts after the laws were passed, and then dragged their feet in enforcing those laws after they were upheld by the courts.
These tactics delayed the enforcement of Jim Crow seating laws for years in some places. Then company employees began to be arrested for not enforcing such laws and at least one president of a streetcar company was threatened with jail if he didn't comply.
None of this resistance was based on a desire for civil rights for blacks. It was based on a fear of losing money if racial segregation caused black customers to use public transportation less often than they would have in the absence of this affront.
Just as it was not necessary for an overwhelming majority of whites to demand racial segregation through the political system to bring it about, so it was not necessary for an overwhelming majority of blacks to stop riding the streetcars, buses and trains in order to provide incentives for the owners of these transportation systems to feel the loss of money if some blacks used public transportation less than they would have otherwise.
People who decry the fact that businesses are in business "just to make money" seldom understand the implications of what they are saying. You make money by doing what other people want, not what you want.
Black people's money was just as good as white people's money, even though that was not the case when it came to votes.
Initially, segregation meant that whites could not sit in the black section of a bus any more than blacks could sit in the white section. But whites who were forced to stand when there were still empty seats in the black section objected. That's when the rule was imposed that blacks had to give up their seats to whites.
Legal sophistries by judges "interpreted" the 14th Amendment's requirement of equal treatment out of existence. Judicial activism can go in any direction.
That's when Rosa Parks came in, after more than half a century of political chicanery and judicial fraud.

Remembering Rosa Parks

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