Rosa Parks's Radical Notes
Rosa Parks's Radical Notes
"By the time I was six, I was old enough to realize that we were actually not free."
The obvious subject for today’s edition would have been Martin Luther King, Jr., but I’m hoping to visit his archives this summer, so I’ll hold off on writing about him until I have more to report.
More importantly—MLK will get enough attention today. Americans hear his speeches and learn the contours of his biography from an early age. The women of the civil rights movement, however, are often reduced to a single sentence. So, I will use today’s post to shine a light on the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement”: Rosa Parks (1913-2005). While most Americans know her name, few know her story. She wasn’t just a seamstress who sat down on a bus one day in 1955. She was a radical.
Parks’s notebooks illustrate her involvement with the NAACP, her life-long identity as a freedom fighter, and her investment in children. Shockingly, her notes languished in storage until recently, when Howard G. Buffett bought the collection and donated it to the Library of Congress. The collection contains 7,500 manuscripts and 2,500 photographs. These papers were first made available to the public in 2015, and now they are almost completely digitized and freely available online.
We also have a fascinating new documentary to teach us about her life. If you have time off today, I highly recommend it.
Rosa Parks
By the age of six, Rosa McCauley understood that she was not free.
In the Jim Crow era of her childhood, the Ku Klux Klan terrorized their neighborhoods and committed racially-motivated acts of violence with impunity.As her grandnephew, Lonnie McCauley, explains “she was a soldier from birth.”
Because Rosa was fiercely protective of her younger brother, she developed a strong sense of right and wrong. She hated to see others mistreated, and injustice surrounded her. Among her earliest memories, Rosa recalls how her grandfather would stay up all night with a loaded shotgun. The family slept in their clothes in case they needed to run from the KKK. As a result, Rosa suffered from insomnia for the rest of her life.Rosa’s life changed when she met her husband, Raymond Parks. His activism attracted her. And, he introduced her to the NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), where she would lead the youth division in Montgomery, Alabama. Rosa Parks was an organizer. She organized people, but she also organized her own notes.
The Montgomery Fair Date Book
When she was arrested on December 1st of 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a bus, Parks was employed by a department store called Montgomery Fair. From 1955-1956, she used one of their date books as a notebook. (She was fired from this job after the bus stand.) Don’t let the docile front-cover fool you: here she coordinates NAACP members and reflects on the nature of racism.
Inside, she lists the names and contact information of of NAACP workers.
On another page she lists “bus witnesses.” She also included notes from church sermons and thoughts on the movement.
Now is the Time On Call for youth
Rudolph Whittenberg
Lillian Smith Mrs. Caple
Barriers of Young Negro Children
Developement [of] Test of Educator [Barrier]
Robert J. Hanihurst
Probing our Prejudices
Hortense Powdermaker
Sense and Nonsense
about Race.
This particular notebook strikes me as a fitting metaphor for Rosa Parks. Despite her demure appearance, she was “a soldier” as her grandnephew explained.
December 1st 1955
In 1956, Rosa Parks gave an interview about that infamous day on that public bus. Here, she also clears up some misconceptions: specifically, she was sitting in the “colored” section, and she had no plans to refuse to give up her seat on that particular day.
She wasn’t old or tired on this particular day. Rather, she was “tired of giving in” as she wrote in her autobiography. She also recalls thinking of Emmet Till as she refused to give up her seat.
Rosa Parks never wanted to be the face of the Montgomery bus-boycott, all she ever cared about was helping to organize the movement.
Rosa Parks, the Organizer (1956)
Her 1956 notebook braids together different types of organization. Here, she organizes her ideas, travel, and groups of people fighting for civil rights.
The bus boycott was a remarkable feat of organization that began four days after Rosa’s arrest. For over a year, Montgomery’s Black citizens stayed off the buses until, finally the buses were desegregated.
On this page, Rosa appears to take notes during a meeting held to discuss the boycott. They seem to be scribbled hastily.
We will return to the buses if driver + fare situation is cleared by written committment [sic]. No announcement in mass meeting of motive.
Regular meeting Thursday night
Possibly of arrests if persons returning to buses are arrested.
Rosa Parks was not the first Black woman to refuse to give up her seat. But, she was the best representative of the movement. She notes the names of some of the other women on the same page where she names the judges who decided Browder v. Gayle —the case that finally outlawed bus segregation.
3 judges in Fed.
injunction- U.S. Dist
Judges. Frank M.
Johnson, Seybourn
Lynn, U.S. Circuit
Judge Richard T.
Rives.
Mar. 2, 55 Claudette Colvin
Oct. 21-55 - Mary Louise Smith
Dec. 1. 55 Rosa Parks
As Parks's notes make clear, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith, had refused to give up their seats earlier.
But because these women were so young, the NAACP felt their cases would not turn out well. Parks, on the other hand, was perfect. As MLK writes in his autobiography, “Mrs. Parks was ideal for the role assigned to her by history…[because] her character was impeccable and her dedication deep-rooted… [she was] one of the most respected people in the Negro community."Parks was an expansive thinker and she learned about protests happening throughout the world. Here she writes about Ghandi in India, and she advocated against apartheid in South Africa.
Sd. Ghandi in India
different situation.
Unity of purpose of Afri
'Could strangl Whites_
Africans 4-1-poplati
Montgy - FOR. Rev.
Glenn Smiley working
with Dr. King. Violence
would make it an
[inferno]
Donate
Associate.
educate
agitate
legislate
Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Montgomery bus boycott ushered MLK to the national stage. In many ways his celebrity depended upon Rosa Parks’s bravery. But, of course, their lives took different paths. For one, Parks was fired from her job after the bus boycott. She couldn’t find work in Montgomery, and ultimately, Raymond and Rosa Parks moved to Detroit, where they would live for the rest of their lives. Rosa and her husband fell into a “desperate financial situation.” King petitioned the MIA (the Montgomery Improvement Association) to give her $300 from the Relief Fund because “her situation demands it” and “the Montgomery Improvement Association owes this to Mrs. Parks above any other.”
Parks would return to the south when the movement required her. She led the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery with King.
Parks sat in the front row at King’s funeral. After 1977, Parks would accompany Corretta Scott King as she traveled to continue her husband’s legacy. Here is a clip of MLK’s funeral from The Rebellious Life of Rosa Parks.
Rosa Parks’s Legacy
Rosa kept a scrapbook beginning in 1989 in which she collected news-cuttings about her work at the NAACP and many letters students sent to her. Here is an example from 1989:
10/28/89
Dear Mrs. Parks,
I will miss you when you
go. We will always remember
you. Because you are special
to me. I heard about what you
did because Lydia always comes
to talk to us about you. I'm sure
we'll always admire you. Not
because your famous But Because
you’re you. That’s what makes you
so special.
Love Your friend
(The Flower Girl)
PS. Please write back
Civil Rights in the 21st Century
When Rosa Parks died in 2005, her body lay in honor at the nation’s capital. The honors afforded her contrasted sharply with the events unfolding in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Parks’s biographer, Jeanne Theoharis explains how she first became interested in how Parks “was being memorialized.” She explains,
To me, there was nothing coincidental about having this national funeral for Rosa Parks less than two months after Hurricane Katrina. Honoring the lifelong freedom fighter Rosa Parks (who had insisted, to the end, that the struggle wasn’t over) became a way to put racism in the past—at a time when the federal negligence during Hurricane Katrina was forcing a necessary spotlight on enduring racial and economic injustice.
Clearly, the work of the civil right’s movement is not over. No one understood this better than Parks. In 1987 she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. The institute was designed to foster leadership in new generations, teaching them about Black history. “When students come to class and demand to be educated…education will take place,” Parks said.
As Parks wrote on the back of a pharmacy bag in the 1990s, “the struggle continues.”
The Struggle Continues,
We must [keeping moving]
to reach our goal of
[freedom, peace]
equality, The
We must
The
The Struggle Continues
as we to [the 90s enter]
The [the] 1990s with love, dedication
faith and hope toward [the]
The struggle [C] continues [as]
[we] We must keep alive [the]
[Dr. Martin Kings] Dr. Kings
dream of the Beloved Community
[to] The Struggle continues
as we keep alive Dr. King's
dream of the Beloved
Com
I hope you found Rosa Parks’s story inspiring!
Thank you, as always, for reading. You can support “Noted” by hitting the heart, commenting, sharing, or subscribing.
Till Next Week,
Jillian
P.S.
If you missed it, yesterday I posted a short preview of Octavia Butler’s notes from my visit to the Huntington Library. This preview is my way of thanking the paid subscribers who helped fund this research. Stay tuned, my full write-up on Butler’s notes will be free to all!
Parks, Rosa, and Jim Haskins. Rosa Parks: My Story. Penguin, 1999.
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. Directed by Johanna Hamilton and Yoruba Richen, Peacock Productions, SO’B Productions, 2022.
Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.
Waxman, Olivia B. “The Montgomery Bus Riders Who Came Before Rosa Parks | Time.” Time, Mar. 2022, https://time.com/5786220/claudette-colvin-mary-louise-smith/.
King Jr., Martin Luther. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Grand Central Publishing, 2001., p.55.
Quoted in Theoharis, Jeanne. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. Reprint edition, Beacon Press, 2015, p. 259.
This clip comes from Democracy Now’s feature on the documentary.
Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.
Theoharis, Jeanne. A Rebellious Life. 16 Mar. 2017, https://chapter16.org/a-rebellious-life/.
Theoharis, Jeanne. “1994 Mugging Reveals Rosa Park’s True Character.” Women’s ENews, 2 Feb. 2013, https://womensenews.org/2013/02/1994-mugging-reveals-rosa-parks-true-character/.
Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.
Your post made Rosa Parks so much more of a real person and brought her to life, thank you!
It was especially interesting to read, though, that she was not the first to refuse to give up her seat. While the narrative has been shaped around this one heroic woman, there were many Rosa Parks at the time! And there are many out there now who will never be recognized.
Such an inspiring post, Jillian. Here in the UK, we are taught about Rosa, but not as extensively as she clearly deserves. Your comments about her childhood reminded me of Maya Angelou's experiences as a child in 'I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings'.