In Hindi it's called "Darshan" — the viewing of a saint or a saintly person, dead or alive. When I heard that Rosa Parks, who had died in
Detroit and would be buried there, would be the first woman to lie in state
in the Capitol Rotunda, I had to go pay my respects.
So did my friend, Liz Cox. We heard and read about the bus boycott in Montgomery,
Alabama as children. It began early in December of 1955 after Rosa Parks
refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man. All other
seats in the bus were occupied. It lasted through December of 1956, after
the Supreme Court had affirmed a lower court decision declaring that Alabama's laws requiring segregation on buses were unconstitutional.
I was ten in December of 1955; Liz was 16. I grew up in Los Angeles; Liz
in Port Arthur, Texas. I don't remember much about December 1955, but I do remember that the Montgomery bus boycott became a regular topic of conversation with my mother throughout 1956. Born and raised in northern Alabama, she had gotten right on race, and made it clear that she thought
the South was wrong and had to change its ways.
The attitude of Liz's family was still rooted in Southern sensibilities.
They knew that the year-long refusal of Montgomery blacks was opening
Pandora's box, but they didn't like it. Liz was the rebel in her family,
the one who said "it's about time."
Desegregation was a long time coming. During the late 19th Century there
was a movement for white supremacy. What had been a somewhat fluid system
of rules about race and place was hardened into law, with criminal penalties – or worse – for breaking them. The NAACP was founded in 1909 to combat
these laws. As secretary of the Montgomery chapter, Parks wrote and typed numerous letters objecting to the treatment of blacks by white public
officials and public employees.
Parks was the third Montgomery woman in 1955 to refuse to give up her seat
on a city bus, but the first that E.D. Nixon, former head of the local
NAACP, thought was the right symbol for a legal challenge. Middle-aged,
quiet, respectable, and pleasant, Parks was not susceptible to the character
assassination that Nixon knew would come. Nonetheless, by the time the
boycott ended she had become such a symbol of black resistance that her life
was threatened and she could no longer find work in Montgomery. In 1957 she
and her husband moved to Detroit, where they made a life for themselves for
almost fifty years.
After John Conyers Jr. became a Member of Congress in 1965 (D. MI) he hired her in his District office, but left her plenty of time to travel and speak
as the respected mother of the civil rights movement. I met and photographed
her at a 1988 conference on women and the civil rights movement held at the
King Center in Atlanta. She bore her celebrity stoically, the same way she
had gone to jail in 1955. It wasn't what she wanted, but if it served the
cause, she would put up with it.
Liz and I met at 5:00 p.m. in front of the National Museum of the American Indian. The procession carrying the casket had landed at Baltimore's Thurgood Marshall
airport. DC was the second stop on a three city tour of Parks' remains. Southwest Airlines had made available a jet with an all black flight crew to
take her to Montgomery for one memorial service, and to return her to
Detroit the following day for another. After a Capitol ceremony, she was scheduled to lie in state until midnight on Sunday, October 30, and from
7:00 a.m. until 10:00 a.m. on Monday. Even in death Parks was still a
traveling ambassador for civil rights.
As darkness gathered, we watched the west lawn of the Capitol fill with
people, while those of us hanging out on 3rd St. waited for the hearse. It
finally arrived at 7:30, followed by a decorated DC metrobus to symbolize
Parks' action, and whisked down the street. We each took one photograph;
even though I jogged down the street in pursuit, the procession never
stopped long enough for me to get another one.
On the way back, Liz spotted two men carrying printed signs that said "Thank you Rosa Parks." We asked to take their photo; soon a small crowd of
people was passing the signs around while their friends and family took
photos memorializing the moment. We debated joining the lines waiting to
view the casket, but knew that there were too many people to get through
before closing. Women, some with children in tow, appeared to be about
two-thirds of those waiting to honor Rosa Parks.
We returned at 6:00 the next morning. As the sky lightened, we threaded
through the maze of ropes and fences up Capitol Hill to the security tent.
Once there we found that the line waiting to be searched was rather short.
The Capitol police had decided to let mourners come through all night long.
Instead of entering the Capitol at 7:00 a.m., we were out by then.
The casket sat solemnly in the middle of the Rotunda, with an honor guard
at both ends. Around the perimeter were several statues — the
semi-permanent residents of the Rotunda. Across from where we stood were
the black bars of the press risers, left from the previous evening's
ceremony. As we stood quietly with a few dozen others and paid our
respects, we could see the statue of the three suffragists peering at Rosa
Parks from behind the bars. This statue, donated to the Capitol in 1921,
had been relegated to the basement until feminist protest raised it up in
1997. It was fitting that the first woman to lie in state should be watched
over by three of her forebears in the fight for civil rights.
My first attempt to take a photograph of the casket was thwarted by a
Capitol Hill policeman, who told me that photos were prohibited inside the
Capitol. So was my last attempt. But in between .... Today's small
camera phones and digital cameras make a mockery of such a prohibition.
From the flashing lights and the raised cell phones, it was obvious that we
weren't the only ones carrying cameras. We just had to be a little less
obvious about using them.
Once outside we parted. Liz had had enough Darshan. I wanted more.
I found it at the Metropolitan AME Church. AME stands for African
Methodist Episcopal. The oldest of the black denominations, it was founded
shortly after the American Revolution by former slaves who did not like
being treated like poor relations in the House of God.
This was Rosa Park's
religious home in Montgomery and Detroit; the "National Cathedral of African
Methodism" was the right place in D.C. to celebrate her life. The service was scheduled for 1:00. I came late because I knew I
wouldn't get in and I can stand immobile in a crowd for only so long. There
were about 200 people outside, flanking the entranceway and across the
street. The hearse was parked out front, and a large picture of Parks was
off to one side. The church had thoughtfully provided speakers so we could
hear the service and the many tributes from famous people. The D.C. police were mellow until about half an hour before the end, when they became rather
heavy handed for a small crowd that had come to view and not to protest. I
made it near the back of the hearse after the casket had been put inside and
the door closed; when I tried to photograph the back, an officer stepped in
front of my camera. When I asked him to step aside just long enough for me
take a photo, he only smirked. I don't think Rosa Parks would have
approved.
The speakers in the church rightly extolled her fortitude and her courage,
but Rosa Parks knew well how long and how hard people had worked to make
that boycott possible. E.D. Nixon had only envisioned a legal challenge.
But the women of the Women's Political Council, most of them professors at
Alabama State College, had been planning a bus boycott for some time.
Professor Jo Ann Robinson had never forgotten her humiliation by a white bus
driver when she arrived in Montgomery to teach in 1949; many others nursed
bitter memories of their own experiences with abusive drivers personally
interpreting and enforcing the segregation laws.
The WPC had repeatedly asked that these practices be curtailed. In May of
1954 Robinson had written the mayor of Montgomery that several organizations
were thinking of boycotting the busses. As soon as they learned about
Parks' arrest, the women of the WPC stayed up all night to produce and
distribute flyers telling the black population of Montgomery to stay off the
busses.
What began as a one day protest was so successful that it lasted 13 months,
until the city complied with the Supreme Court's ruling. It catapulted the
young minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Martin Luther King, Jr.,
into a nationally known public figure. He was chosen to be the boycott
spokesman largely because he was so new to town that he was not part of any
faction and hadn't made any enemies. It raised consciousness about
segregation and put civil rights on the national agenda, talked about
everywhere. It changed the direction of many young lives.
In 1956, Liz's high school civics class held a mock Presidential election.
When both of the "parties" wrote platforms supporting segregation, Liz and
three classmates (all girls) formed a third party specifically to challenge
that plank. The debate kept her class in turmoil for months.
In 1957, my mother and I drove to Alabama to spend Christmas with her
family. After two years of reading and talking about desegregation, I was
primed. When a tour of the newly renovated county courthouse disclosed
restrooms segregated by race as well as sex, I confronted my grandmother.
She had an important job in that courthouse so to my 12-year-old mind, she
should have prevented this travesty. As we argued about segregation, the
aunts, the uncles and the cousins gathered in the parlor. I spoke from one
side of the room; they stood on the other. In between us, off to the side,
my mother watched the debate without interfering. I interpreted her silence
as approval. Thus was launched my career as a civil rights activist.
