LOCATION: Montgomery, Alabama
PERIOD: 1950s
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (1913–2005)
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement”. Parks became a NAACP activist in 1943, participating in several high-profile civil rights campaigns. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake’s order to vacate a row of four seats in the “colored” section in favor of a White passenger, once the “White” section was filled.
Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation, but the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) believed that she was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws, and she helped inspire the Black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year. The case became bogged down in the state courts, but the federal Montgomery bus lawsuit Browder v. Gayle resulted in a November 1956 decision that bus segregation is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Wikipedia)
ROSA PARKS
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)
She was born in 1913, Jim Crow Alabama
Her mama was a teacher, her daddy slung a hammer
She couldn’t ride the bus to school ’cause she wasn’t white
A quiet girl, taught to be polite – Rosa Parks
1955 Montgomery city buses had two tiers
Whites sat up front and blacks in the rear
One day the seats for whites, they were all taken
If you thought they’d ride standin’ up you’d be mistaken – Rosa Parks
The driver told Rosa to give a white man her seat
But she was tired of giving in, jus’ sat ‘n’ grit her teeth
The police were called and they hauled Rosa in
She had broke the law, but the law was a sin – Rosa Parks
The whole community refused to ride the bus
Their boycott carried on for thirteen months
They drove their own cars along the same bus line
Picking up and making sure folks got to work on time – Rosa Parks
Rosa’s name is the one we know but there were many others
Preachers, treachers, fathers and mothers
The case made its way through the courts to decide
And when they did it was the day Jim Crow died – Rosa Parks
It took one woman who refused to be moved
And marches and sit-ins, before things improved
This battle has gone on 400 years and more
There are battles still to fight in this civil war – Rosa Parks
She was born in nineteen-thirteen, Jim Crow Alabama
Her mama was a teacher, her daddy slung a hammer
Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks
© 2022 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Image By Gene Herrick for the Associated Press; restored by Adam Cuerden – https://collections.si.edu/search/detail/edanmdm:npg_NPG.2013.76?q=record_ID%3Dnpg_NPG.2013.76, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81795628
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