Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History Rosa Parks The M

CSPAN3 Lectures In History Rosa Parks The Montgomery Bus Boycott July 12, 2024

1 15. So our focus today then is going to be the montgomery bus boycott. Like i said. Thats what you read all of your sources for, except the payne article which gave you a larger focus. To do that. We are going to go back to our discussion of origin points, right . Our favorite slide which you are going to be so sick of, right, representing the narrative arc of the popular story of the Civil Rights Movement. And we are going back to our topic of origin points again with the objective of troubling it. One, putting those events in context, but also troubling the idea of them as arge points. Last week, we discussed brown versus board of education. We discussed the decision, response, the impact, but also the legacy. And i want to talk more about the legacy as we go forward. But we are to the going do that today. Then on tuesday, we spent time talking about the emmett till case, right . And the lynching of emmett till in august of 19 a 5. We used a mix of primary and secondary sources to consider how ideologies of race, gender, and justice impacted that case and impacted the lived experience of people in that case. I just wanted to take a moment to pull out and say this this week what happened this week that is of significance in relationship to the till case. Anybody paying attention . Yeah. Go ahead morgan. They passed the antilynching legislation. They passed the emmett till antilynching act. That designates lynching as a hate crime under federal law. And this legislation is coming 65 years after tills lichlging and 120 years after Congress First considered antilynching legislation. So thats 120 years of Congress Failing to, choosing not to, pass such legislation. In 2005, congress did see fit to apologize, apologized to the descendants of lynching victims, but it took another 15 years for both the senate and the house to pass this legislation. Then will it go to the white house for signing by president trump. So you can imagine that there are a lot of responses going on to this. And the prominent one is why now . And people are asking, is this commemorative . Is this a cause for celebration . Or is this a cause for concern . Is this preemptive . What is the cause now that is making this bill feasible within congress when it has been 120 years that it hasnt been the case. I just want to take a moment to point out ida b. Wells. Because a lot of people in talking about this antilynching legislation are asking, you know, what about wells . Ida b. Wells was a activist and a journalist in the late 19th century who publicly and doggedly and defendantly was condemning and publicizing lynching most notably through her publication a red record. She did this at great cost. Her printing effort was built down. She was run out of town. You can see why some would say certainly that till shouldnt be attached but where is the connection to ida b. Wells. We will talk about ida b. Wells in montgomery. Today we are focusing on the montgomery bus boycott. I want to put it in the time line that i showed you last time. We have the brown versus board of education decision in may of 1954. Then we have brown versus board of education two, the following year, in may of 19 5. Then the emmett till lynching in august of 1955. I dont think a lot of people realized how close to the till lynching that the montgomery bus boycott was. You have rosa parks being arrested on december 1st of 1955. That was a thursday. Then the following monday, on december 5th. The montgomery bus boycott begins. All right . So thats just a little bit of context for you. To put it in a visual form. And so we are going to use the readings today to consider to consider the bus boycott. And these readings give you a lot of information about events and circumstances leading up to but not so much information necessarily about the boycott. So we will also talk about that. And we can continue that conversation in our next in our next lecture as well and certainly if people have questions. I want to focus on montgomery because more than any of the other origin events that we talked about, montgomery is most often cited as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement within the popular narrative. And that i find the popular narrative of the boycott itself within this larger narrative to be somewhat problematic. And i want to dig into that myth or that story of the montgomery bus boycott. In doing that, i think an effective way of doing that is looking to a central pig yourfi that myth, rosa parks. Right . I want to look at what i call the mythic rosa parks. I want to make a real distinction between rosa parks as a person, as a woman, and then rosa parks as an icon. Right . And we are going to be talking about both. But those are two separate things. So i i want to ask you if you can give me some of you may have a lot more information about rosa parks. We have a lot more Information Available to us right now. But if you can just give me a sense of the popular narrative, the enduring narrative or idea of rosa parks as you likely learned when you were in Elementary School. Or typically celebrated through black history month. I think what i learned about her in Elementary School was definitely she refused to give up her seat. She was like an ordinary woman coming from work and it was just like a manifestation of the common attitudes of the time and the common you know, shes just an ordinary woman. And like a martyr, honestly, like how it was portrayed. Yeah, she definitely became a martyr in that sense. Anyone else . I guess what i learned about it was that like she was the catalyst for this Like Movement that as if she was the only woman or person that had been arrested for not giving up their seat. As if like it was a single incident that happened, and it was her. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as much as the montgomery bus boycott is seen as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement she is seen as the beginning of the bus boycott. Thats where the tiling mother of the Civil Rights Movement comes from, right . An our best day, how many of us can hope for such a tiling. But, yeah, going off of both of those points shes typically she was typically described as this elderly woman. She was 42. I need that not to be elderly, all right . She was not elderly. She was described as an elderly stream stress, many of these accounts did not give her name. Elderly seamstress with tired feet, tired feet to single handedly took a seat and single handedly sparked the modern bla black sfl rights movement. This was the picture that my mother handed me. I held onto that well into my graduate studies. It was only when i started doing my own research as a masters student that that image started to crumble. Not just crumble, become frustrating to me. Right . Because i think that this ideal of parks really frustrates or negates her actual history, and particularly her activist history. Right . In recent years, we have had historians who are really working or really worked to break down kind of that idea the give us a more complicated picture. And i want to point to these two books in particular. Anybody read any of them . All right. This could be new for you. At the dark end of the street by daniel mcguire, and the rebellious life of mrs. Rosa parks talent rebellious life of mrs. Rosa parks already tells you thats going to be a corrective narrative in that sense. These are great sources. I am drawing on them some with you today. All right. So i want to use this use these books or use the information that i have from books and my own research to kind of deconstruct that myth. And i am going to ask you if you know more about rosa parks or if what you are holding onto you can raise your hands. You dont have to answer. If what you are holding on to how many people are holding onto this typical iconic idea that gets celebrated in black history month. For how many of you is that the image that you are most familiar with . Wow. Okay. All right. Thats really thats really not surprising because i think that image circulates in museums, newspapers, definitely in Elementary School, Childrens Books and all of those. It is not surprising to me, but it is troubling to me. It is very troubling. What i want to point out is how how simple and inaccurate that representation is. I will start at the beginning. Beginning in the 1930s, rosa parks was campaigning on behalf of the scotts borrow boys with her husband. Melody brought up the scotts borrow boys in our last class in terms of the nine africanamerican men who were accused of raping two white women on a train. It was long drawn out case in which many of them spent years and years and years in prison. So rosa parks was actively campaigning on their behalf. Which is notable because also as melody brought out these are africanamerican who is were defended by the communist party. Right . Right there, thats a subversive kind of activity. Dont worry about righting this down. I will send it to you immediately after. Listen to the story. Just listen to the story. Technically if this is the first time you have had any encounter to this woman. I promise you. All right . All right . She sat as the lookout on the steps the her own home while they were meetings, naacp meetings held in her house where she discusses she had never seen so many guns on her kitchen table, never seen so many guns until those meetings were held in her house. She joined the naacp in 1943, either the second or the third woman in montgomery to do that. I should say the montgomery chapter of the naacp. And she became the secretary almost immediately because nobody else wanted to do it. Right . Is that in and of itself as a woman was unusual in montgomery at that time, less and less unusual, the one of the other women of the two or three was her mother. You could see there is some modelling going on there. This is key. In her role as the secretary of the naacp in the 1940s in montgomery, alabama, or in alabama, she traveled around the state by herself to gather evidence or proof or testimony from blacks who can witnessed or experienced white on black violence. Think about that, right . How many of you have seen rosa parks a picture of her . Shes not a formidable woman. Right . Shes a black woman traveling by herself through the jim crow south get material that many whites or Authority Figures would have been upset about. Right . This is a dangerous thing she is doing. Quite in contrast to the image we have of her. Beginning in the 1940s she organized on behalf of sexually assaulted abused black women very openly. Very openly. Thats what theohariss book is actually about. Both of them touch on that, but theoharis really talks about her or traces that history of parks advocating on behalf of sexually abused black women. Black women abused largely by white men, and largely under the awe auspices of white supremacy. She made repeated attempts to register to vote in the 1940s. Repeated events, as we will talk about, and im sure you know to some he can ten this too could be a very dangerous act at this point in time. She protested segregation on the buses before 1955. In fact, she was kicked off a bus by the same bus driver almost a decade earlier for resisting the activities of that bus driver or the instructions of that bus driver. She spoke. She was a featured speaking at the naacp state convention in 1948. I dont think thats an image that we generally have of rosa parks. In fact when i was doing my research a found an audio clip of her on a new york radio interview. And i remember hearing her voice for the first time and being like of course, shes southern. It just surprised me. It just surprised me, because i had never heard her. Like, i had never heard her. Right . But here she is speaking before a convention crowd in 1948. So very public. Very public. She trained at the Highlander Folk School in tennessee. This is before her arrest. She did a twoweek training in desegregation at the Highlander Folk School, which was tagged as communist. It wasnt a communist school. It was a leadership training institution. And it was it was precisely because of brown versus board of education that weiss workshops were being held. It was to help if tate that process. Hopefully peacefully. She never fully embraced nonviolence. She is on the record about that, on the record about not knowing if she could turn the other cheek. She certainly supported the nonviolent activities of the Civil Rights Movement but never fully embraced nonviolence. For how many you have, raise of hands, is that surprising . Right . Thats, again, troubling to me. Right . But not at all surprising. So my question then and i am going to allow for a couple of questions here or a couple of answers. Why do you think there is no right answer, right, because you are you are the ones who know. What do you think there is such an investment, or that that mythic parks as im calling her has taken has survived so long . Well after her death. She died in 2005. Why do you think that has such currency, that idea . I think like when i learned about this i think i was like in Elementary School, it is, 9, 10 years old. I think it is easier for her to be like a one dimensional character in the story that we tell children and you know when we are first learn being this history than it is for her to be like a complex human being that had like more to offer the story than just like sitting on a bus. Yeah. Yeah. Morgan. I think it is also like thinking about how a lot of us again learn about this in Elementary School, very strategic, on Public Education and educators role in general to tell children and push this narrative that black people get what they want if they are nonviolent and passified. There are so many historic world events that we learn about that are achieved by violent means, like revolutionary wise. And this vs she like a catalyst for has been remembered as a catalyst for the Larger Movement and we are being told this person was a nonvie help, peaceful, old, tired woman when that was not the case. I think thats very strategic. At least politically significant if not, you know, if not intended. Others . Anyone else want to speak to that . Yeah. Look at you all. I also think this narrative presents her as a political agent, which is something broader, like for women of all races, like thats something thats not mentioned like she is someone who was strategic in what she did and each in terms of like what organizations she associated with. I think it shows her agency in a way that we are reluctant to talk about when regarding women. Yeah, and remember i told you to draw mamie till bradley forward in terms of thinking about parks and the action she would take in the moment. Thats just months beforehand. Just months. We also have to have to think about how parks might have been presentingers had. We will talk more about that at a different time. I agree with all of you. The montgomery bus boycott is i think one of our greatest National Fairy tales. Right . It is a really nice story in its popular form of good versus evil, david and goliath, right, and that you know, good americans bear out. There is those ab rant racist southerners but good wins out. I think when there is the fairy tale, you have simple, good versus bad, and rosa park is the hero, along with Martin Luther king, they are the to of this fairy tale. It is always interesting to me. How many of you learned about rosa parks for if first time in Elementary School in okay. How many of you learned anything else about her after . Okay. It is always interesting to me because i think you are right maybe in the sense that people think that children need simple characters, right . And to me, the sad thing is, thats when i think, you know, minds, attitudes, are very flexible and can take in complex information. You know, i often use the example of when i was in graduate school this Childrens Book came out about Martin Luther king. And my professor brought it in. And he read it to us. And it said on april 4th, 1968, Martin Luther king died. Which is not inaccurate. Right . But he was assassinated. Right . And thats showing a hesitancy to deal in that material. Then i point people to grimms fairy tales and everything which are horrifying and scary, right . But there is this idea that we need these sanitized stories i think for children. I think that would be fine. But that would be okay if there was then any other point where you were actually learning, you know, building on that story. And my experience is i am sure this is different in different region asks different schools and that. But my experience has been that most people dont then have more information on Civil Rights Movement and or rosa parks. Yes. Sorry eva. I learned about rosa parks when i was young, preschool and then again in Elementary School. Then in middle school or high school i learned how she was not the first person to to the give up other seattle. I think that was interesting and one of the articles quoted a parks had the car better of character we needed to get the city to rally behind uls. I thought that was an interesting for me that was the moment i was curious why rosa parks if this happened before rosa parks, custom the article laid out. I thought it was interesting that we specifically focus on her and dont talk about the back story behind her when we are talking about her. Lets go through that. One of the reasons that i focus on the symbolic mythic a parks or start there is because i think shes propping up this bigger myth of the montgomery myth. And then i would argue that that is also obscuring information about the Montgomery Movement and the montgomery bus boycott that would be really helpful to us now. Information about organizing, information about how they funded things, information about what formed their theories or their strategies. Right . So i want to speak to that. Because thats a huge question. Why . Why do we not have that other information. The montgomery myth. Here are some aspects of it. Dont worry about writing it down. I will send it to you. Rosa park is an accidental activist. Had enough, tired, going home, i am not taking it anymore. That

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