Rosa Parks: Willed Risk and Collective Action

Rosa Parks died yesterday, at the age of 92. She was, still is, and always will be, one of my major American heros. I graduated from a private high school in a small North Carolina town just outside of Charlotte. The school was integrated, although it wasn't very integrated. Only families that could afford the tuition could send their kids there, which narrowed the odds quite a bit. One of my best friends was one of those students, she and her sisters, daughters of an African American doctor, all attended the academy. When it came time for our senior trip to Washington DC, my friend opted not to come along. I didn't understand why, innocent that I was (having just come to the more-or-less rural South from four years of living in a completely integrated and racially mixed Central American country), until our first bathroom/refreshment stop. The signs everywhere informed me that my friend would not have been able to: go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, or order a hamburger, with the rest of us.

This was 1960, and neither the Civil Rights Act nor the Voting Rights Act had yet been passed. Schools were desegregated, but public places like restaurants and bus station restrooms were not. The memory of my amazement, anger, sense of injustice and just plain wrong has stayed with me during all the intervening years. It was my first real political awakening. Rosa Parks became a model and a hero for me, and I knew the basic outlines of her story. It wasn't until years later as I was helping one of my ESL high school students with research on her chosen subject for a social studies term paper - The Life of Rosa Parks - that I really learned more of the details. One of the more interesting of those details is her connection with what was then called the Highlander Folk School, in Tennessee. It's now called the Highlander Research and Education Center, and is no longer located on the wonderful old rambling farm in Monteagle where it began. In New Market, TN, it retains pretty much the mission with which it began:

The Highlander Center works with people struggling against oppression, supporting their effort to take collective action to shape their own destiny. It creates educational experiences that empower people to take democratic leadership towards fundamental change.

Highlander works with community groups primarily in Appalachia and the deep South. Because we are located in the poorest region of the world's richest and most powerful nation, we work with people who benefit least from our society as it is now structured. Because we function in a racist society, as well as one suffering from discrimination based on gender, class, sexual orientation, age, and physical abilities, we actively promote equity in our society. We also maintain exchanges and linkages with national and international groups because we recognize the global dimension of economic and political justice and the need for multiregional and multicultural movements for positive social change.

The time Rosa Parks spent at the School, attending workshops and classes during the years that the School was focused on helping the Civil Right Movement, formed her sense of dedication to equal rights. There she also met other people, such as Martin Luther King, who would grow from young activists to mature leaders of the Movement. The history of this place is a history of the leftist movements of our century: the Labor Movement in the 1930's and 40's, Civil Rights in the 50's and 60's, in the 70's and 80's they took on the struggles of the Appalachian people - poverty, environmental degradation, job loss, corporate takeover of land and resources. Today they work with Latino immigrants as well as all the other organizations and groups in this country struggling to create democratic communitites and establish bridges and connections.

The Center has a tribute to Rosa Parks here, which begins like this:

Beyond the historical myth-making, she maintained a deep connection to those on the ground--the ordinary folk who comprise the grand struggle. She demonstrated with humility, dignity, commitment, and resolve the power of an ordinary person, working with others, to do extraordinary things. And in the spirit of ordinary-folk-in-struggle, Highlander is honored to have held a particular connection to Rosa Parks.

Our society teaches history through stories of remarkable individuals, and while Rosa Parks was indeed remarkable, her story is also about collective action, willed risk, intentional plans and mass movement. Sanitized versions of this story refer to Mrs. Parks as simply being tired on December 1, 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white man. She was not simply tired that day but tired of racism and segregation, tired of the constantly being treated as a second-class citizen.

There is also a page of photos of her during her times of attendance at the Folk School. This
photo is but one example. It's not very impressive, not even very clear - but, here's who is standing in this clump of ordinary-looking people: from left to right, Martin Luther King, Peter Seeger, Charis Horton, Rosa Parks, and Ralph Abernathy (at Highlander's 25th anniversary celebration; Monteagle, TN; 1957.) What a wonderful slice of history, say what? These are people who changed the history of this country. This was an amazing place and time and a collection of amazing souls. In it was formed Rosa's spirit of determiniation. I will miss having Rosa Parks with us on the planet. We need to keep her spirit of determination to work for justice alive within us all.

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