Myths about rosa parks and the montgomery bus boycott. She was not the first africanamerican woman who trooe fused to give her seat. Why this version has become so widespread. So our focus today then is going to be the montgomery bus boycott. That is and what you read your sources for except the payne article that gave you a larger focus and to do that well go back to the discussion of origin point. Our favorite slide which youre going to be so sick of. Representing the narrative arc of the popular story of the Civil Rights Movement. And were 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 origin points. And 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 were not going to do that today. And then on tuesday, we spent time talking about the emmett till case. And which the lynching of emmett till in august of 1955 and we used a mix of secondary and primary sources to consider hour ideology of race and gender and justice impacted that case and the lived experience of people in that case. And i wanted to take a moment to pull out and say that this week, what happened this week, that is of significance in relationship to the till case. Anybody paying attention . Yeah . Go ahead. They passed antilynching legislation. Yeah. They passed the emmett till antilynching act as a hate crime under federal law. And this legislation is coming 65 years after tills lynching and 120 years after Congress First considered antilynching legislation. So that is 120 years of Congress Failing to, choosing not to pass such legislation. In 2005, congress did see fit to apologize. Apologize to the descendants of lynching victims. But it took another 15 years for the senate and the house to pass this legislation and then it will go to the white house for signing by president trump. So you could 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 context now that is making this bill feasible within congress when it has been 120 years that hasnt been the case. So i just want to take a moment to point out ida b. Wells. Because people in talking about this antilynching legislation are asking, what about wells . Ida b. Wells was an activist and journalist in the late 19th century who publicly and doggedly consistently was condemning lynching. Most notably through her publication of red record. And she did this at great personal cost. Her printing outfit was burned down. She was run out of town. So you could understand why some people say that till shouldnt be attached but where is the recognition of ida b. Wells. And well come back to wells in talking about montgomery. So going back to the origin points here, i just wanted to point that out. Today well focus only montgomery bus boycott and i want to put that in the time line that we were talking about or that i showed you montgomery busboy c boycott. We have the brown versus board of education in 1954, then brown versus board of education ii. And then the till lynching. You have rosa parks being arrested on december 1st of 1955. That was a thursday. And then the following monday, on december 5th, the montgomery bus boycott begins. Thats a little bit of context for you to put it in a visual form. So, were going to use the readings today to consider the busboy cot. Well continue that conversation in our next lecture as well. And certainly if people have questions. So, i want to focus on montgomery because more than any of the other origin events that weve talked about, montgomery is most often cited as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement within the popular narrative. And i find the popular narrative of the boycott itself within this larger narrative to be somewhat problematic. And i want to talk 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 figure in that myth, rosa parks, right . I want to look at what i call the mythic rosa parks. So, i want to make a real distinction between rosa parks as a person, as a woman and then rosa parks as an icon, right . Were going to be talking about both. Those are two separate things. So, i want to ask you if you can give me some you may have a lot more information about rosa parks. We have a lot more Information Available to us now. If you could give me a sense of the popular narrative, the enduring narrative, or the idea of rosa parks as you likely learned when you were in Elementary School, or typically celebrated through black History Month . Anybody want to go out there . I think what i learned about her in Elementary School is she refused to give up her seat. Shes an ordinary woman coming from work, and it was just a man manifest. Shes a martyr is how it portrayed. She definitely became a martyr in that sense. I guess what i learned about it is she was the catalyst for this movement as if she was the only woman or person that had been arrested for not giving up their seat, as if it was a single incident that happened and it was her. Yeah, i mean, as much as the montgomery bus boycott is seen as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, shes seen as the beginning of the bus boycott, right . So, thats where that title, mother of the Civil Rights Movement comes from, right . On our best day, how many of us can hope for such a title. Going off of both those points, shes typically she was at least typically described as this elderly woman. She was 42. I need that not to be elderly. Shes not elderly. Shes described as an elder saems stress with tired feet who single handedly sparked the modern black freedom movement. I dont want to deny her any of her importance. This is the rosa parks that with the best of intentions my mother introduced me to when i was very young. I held on to that picture all the way through college, all the way through history classes in college, well into graduate studies. It was only when i started doing my own research as a masters student that that image started to crumble. And not just crumble, become really frustrating to me because i think that this ideal of parks really us fr really frustrates and negates her actually history and her activist history. We have historians that have really worked to break down that idea to give us a more complicated picture. I want to point to these two books in particular. Anybody read any of them . All right. This could be new for you. All right. So, at the end of the dark street and the rebellious life of mrs. Rosa parks already tells you thats going to be a corrective narrative in that sense. If you have a desire to know more about rosa parks as a woman, as an activist, these are great sources. Im drawing on them some to do that with you today. So, i want to use this use these books or use the information i have from books in 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 youre holding on to you can just raise your hands. You dont even have to answer. For how many people youre holding on to this kind of typical iconic idea that gets celebrated in black History Month . For how many of you is that the image that youre most familiar with . Wow. Okay. All right. Thats really thats really not surprising because i think that it circulates in musings, newspapers, definitely in Elementary Schools, Childrens Books and all those. Its not surprising to me, but it is troubling. Its very troubling. What i want to point out is how simple and inaccurate that representation is. So, ill just start at the beginning. Beginning in the 1930s, rosa parks was campaigning on behalf of the scottsboro boys with her husband, right . Melanie brought up the skots bow row boys who were accused of raping two white women on a train. And it was this 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 up, these were africanamericans who were defended by the communist party, right . So, right there, thats a subversive kind of activity. Dont worry about writing this down. I will send this to you immediately after. Listen to the story. Just listen to the story, particularly if its the first time youve actually had any encounter to this woman. I promise you. All right. So, she sat as the lookout on the steps to her own home while there were naacp meetings held in her house. She had never seen so many guns on her kitchen table, until those meetings were held in her house. She joined the naacp in 1943, either the second or third woman in montgomery to do that. So, i should say the montgomery chapter of the naacp. She became the secretary almost immediately because nobody else wanted to do it. That in and of itself, as a woman, was unusual in montgomery at that time. Less and less unusual one of the other women of the two or three was her mother. So, you could see that theres some modeling 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 travelled around the state by herself to gather evidence or testimony from blacks who had 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 to get material that many whites or Authority Figures would have been upset about. 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 the behalf of sexually abused black women, sexually assaulted, abused black women. Very openly. Very openly. Thats what the oharris book is about. The oharris talked about her or traces the history of parks. Black women abused largely by black men and white supremacy. She made repeated attempts to vote in the 1940s. As well talk about, 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 or the instructions of that bus driver. She was a featured speaker at the naacp state convention in 1948. I dont think thats an image we have of rosa parks. I 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. I never heard her, right . But here she is speaking before a convention crowd in 1948. Its very public. Very public. She trained he Highlander Folk School in tennessee. This is before her arrest. S 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 precisely because of brown versus board of education that these workshops were being held. It was to help learn how to facilitate that process, hopefully peacefully. She never fully embraced nonviolence. And shes on the record about that. Shes on the record about not knowing if threatened with violence or messed with in a particular way if she could turn the other cheek. She certainly supported some of the nonviolent activities of the Civil Rights Movement as we think about it, but she never fully embraced nonviolence. So, for how many of you, raise of hands, is that surprising. Thats, again, troubling to me, but not at all surprising. So, my question then, and i am going to allow for a couple of answers here. Why do you think theres no right answer, right . Because you are youre the ones who know. Why do you think theres such an investment or that that mythic pa part, as im calling her, has survived so long well after her death. She died in 2005. Why do you think that has such currency, that idea . I think when i learned about this, i think i was in Elementary School, so i was 8, 9, 10 years old. And i think that its a lot easier for her to be a onedimensional character in the story that we tell children. And when were first learning about this history than it is for her to be a complex human being that had more to offer the story than just sitting on a bus. Yeah, yeah. Morgan. To me, its also thinking about how a lot of us, again, learn about this in Elementary School, very strategic on Public Education and educators rule in general to tell children and to push this narrative that black people get what they want if they are nonviolent and theyre pacified. There are so many world events that we learn about that are achaefed through violent means in European Countries and just by white people generally, revolutionariwise. And then this obviously is a catalyst for or has been remembered as acatalyst for this Larger Movement and were being told this person is this nonviolent peaceful old tired woman when thats not the case. And i think thats very strategic. Its very politically significant, if not intended. Others . Anyone else want to speak to that . Yeah. Yeah, i also think this narrative presents her as a political agent, which is something that even broader for women of all races, thats something thats not really mentioned, that shes someone who was very strategic in what she did. Even in terms of what organizations she associated with. I think it just shows her agency in a way that we are reluctant to even talk about regarding women. Yeah, and remember i told you to draw bradley forward in terms of thinking about thoughts and actions she would take in the moment. Thats just months beforehand. So, we also have to think about how parks might have been presenting herself. Were going to talk more about that at a different time. But i agree with all of you to an extent. I mean, the montgomery bus boycott i think is one of our greatest National Fairy tales. Right. Its just a really nice story in its popular form of good versus evil, david and goliath, right, and that, you know, good americans bear out, right . Theres no aberrant racest southerners, but good americans bear out in that sense. I think when you have a fairy tale, you have very simple good versus bad and rosa parks is the hero along with Martin Luther king. Theyre the hero of this fairy tale. How many of you learned about rosa parks for the first time in Elementary School . Okay. How many of you learned anything else about her after . Okay. Its always interesting to me because i think youre right in the sense that people think 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. 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 . That showed a hesitancy to deal in that material. Then i point people to grimes fairy tales and everything which are horrifying and scary, right. Its this idea we think we need sanitized stories for children. I think that would be fine, but that would be okay if there wasnwas any other point where youre learning and building on that story. Im sure this is different in different regions and different schools and stuff. But my experience is that most people dont then have more education on the Civil Rights Movement and or rosa parks. Yeah, sorry . So, i learned about rosa parks when i was young and preschool probably and then also again in Elementary School. And then later i think in middle school or high school i learned about how she wasnt the first person to not give up her seat. I think thats something thats really interesting. One of the articles, the origins of montgomery bus boycott said that rosa parks had the character we needed to get the city to rally behind us. For me, that was a moment. I was always curious, why rosa parks. This happened before rosa parks which the article laid out. I thought it was interesting that we focus specifically on her and then dont talk about the back story behind her when were learning about her. Yeah, let me speak to that. Lets go through that. One of the reasons i focus on the symbolic mythic rosa parks or start there is because i think shes propping up this bigger myth of the montgomery myth, and 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, why, why do we not have that other information. So, the montgomery myth. Here are aspects of it. Dont worry about writing it down. I will send it to you. Rosa parks is an accidental activist. Shes had enough. Shes tired. Shes going home. Im not taking in anymore. Shes the first one that took that stand, that the boycott is unprecedented, and that the boycott is spontaneous. Thats part of what allows us to have that container idea of the Civil Rights Movement. Suddenly there was organizing on this issue of civil rights. Martin luther king, jr. , it should say, organized the boycott. The masses followed sing. The masses walked, which they did. Boycotts ended segregated buses and that the boycott was short. I just want to tick through those