We Shall Walk: Rosa Parks
Reading & sermon preached by Reverend Carolyn Patierno
January 15, 2006

Untitled, by Rita Dove

How she sat there,
the time right inside a place
so wrong it was ready.

That trim name with
its dream on a bench
to rest on. Her sensible coat.

Doing nothing was the doing:
the clean flame of her gaze
carved by a camera flash.

How she stood up
when they bent down to retrieve
her purse. That courtesy.

Every one thought Rosa Parks was a prim and proper lady, which, of course, she was. “That courtesy.” But that prim and proper lady had nerves of steel. The woman often named as the “mother of the civil rights movement” was no newcomer activist when she stayed put in her seat that day in December of 1955.

When she died last year she was honored in all appropriate ways. But what always struck me about her life was her sense of humility. I read her autobiography and learned about the roots of this humility. Mrs. Parks shared many insights about the events leading up to the decision she made to remain seated.

Among other things, what truly made an impression was her awareness that African American women who were active in the civil rights movement were often shuttled to the back seat by their male peers. She speaks about that unfairness throughout the entire story. True to her feminist sensibility, she gave credit where credit was due. I was surprised to learn that Rosa Parks was not the first woman who refused to give up her seat. Three others had done the same that same year in Montgomery alone. However, their cases went nowhere. The Montgomery chapter of the NAACP was waiting for the “perfect plaintiff” so that they could launch a test suit against the segregation laws. Specifically, they were looking for a woman because they believed a woman would be more sympathetic. They thought they had just the woman in one of the three. She was 18 years-old when she was arrested. Unlike many Black people in Alabama at that time, she was willing to risk endangerment and serve as the plaintiff. However, the younger woman was found to be pregnant and not married and therefore, not the perfect plaintiff, after all. In his biography on Mrs. Parks, Douglas Brinkley pondered the difference between these three cases and the one that finally galvanized the civil rights movement. “There was a strange religious glow about Rosa – a kind of humming Christian light, which gave her a unique majesty.” Said historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. He called Parks the Harriet Tubman of the time.

She didn’t set out to be that test case, however. She’d been raised among people who expressed anger & frustration with the status quo in Alabama, in the Deep South, and in the nation. The man she married, Raymond Parks, was deeply involved with civil rights, putting his own life and that of his wife and mother-in-law in constant danger. In fact, she didn’t think much about whether or not to give up her seat at all. That’s the beauty of it. She just didn’t get up. These are her words:

“The more we gave in and complied, the worse they treated us. … People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was 42. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

I had no police record, I’d worked all my life, I wasn’t pregnant with an illegitimate child. The white people couldn’t point to me and say that there was anything I had done to deserve such treatment except to be born black.

And so, the larger civil rights movement was born.

Rosa Parks was not the orator that Dr. King was, but she did start the whole thing and by doing so, got him involved and on his way. That is also an interesting story. I had been under the impression that Dr. King was her pastor. He wasn’t. In fact, he was new in town and thus far, had not been particularly active in civil rights work. However, after she was arrested, local leaders called upon Black ministers to help organize and publicize the bus boycott. It was thought best that the NAACP not the lead effort. With the NAACP at the helm, it would be too easy for Montgomery’s white establishment to say that the boycott was being organized by outside agitators. They needed a grassroots organization and so, the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed and King was elected as their president. He was 29 years old, smart, and hadn’t been in Montgomery long enough to have made many friends or enemies. The leadership was concerned about both, for many prominent Black leaders at the time allowed themselves to be either intimidated by or be in cahoots with the white establishment. The Black civil rights leaders in Montgomery were extremely astute people, politically. Rosa Parks had been preparing for this time all her lifetime. Wrote the poet, “she sat there, the time / right inside a place / so wrong it was ready.

She was ready. And so was the political organization in which she played a significant role.

Although Mrs. Parks lived through brutal times that are recalled and detailed in her autobiography, it is still an enjoyable read. Her voice comes through each sentence – straight forward, practical, honest. She spends a significant amount of time setting straight the details of her life and experience as much of it has been embellished in order to make an already dramatic story more dramatic. For example, there are many photographs of Rosa Parks riding the bus on the first day of integrated service. In fact, her mother was ill that day and Parks was home tending to her. Instead, a reporter took posed photographs of her boarding several buses (one driven by the same driver that had demanded she give up her seat a year earlier.). The white man sitting behind Parks in these photos is the journalist himself.

Although she respected Dr. King’s commitment to non-violence and believed that this approach was appropriate in pursuing some of the goals of the civil rights movement, she did not herself wholly share the same philosophy. She believed that violence was sometimes necessary and expressed sympathy with Malcom X’s ideas. She met Malcom X the week before he was assassinated, in fact.

This is all to say that in idolizing and embellishing the lives of the people who figured significantly in the civil rights movement, we tend to obliterate the nuances of their stories. Their humanity is eclipsed by the legend. We hear Dr. King’s stunning oratory and we forget that he was a man. Human. And when we loose sight of Rosa Parks’ humanity or that of Dr. King’s we don’t believe that we are capable of affecting significant change. It becomes easier to convince ourselves that there’s not much we can do. But Rosa Parks propelled herself into the fray from a place of conviction so that one day, she didn’t have to think very carefully about taking that first step that began the long journey. Actually, it wasn’t even the first step. Again, she’d been preparing for that moment all her life.

Rosa Parks and others like her acted from the core of their faith and values, and each had a slightly different core. Much is made of the differences between the Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. But there were differences among the Black ministers who met the Friday before the bus boycott was to begin. I understand that, as I continue to learn how to work with my clergy colleagues here in town. Even the ones who know each other well and work together on any number of issues, there is always significant dissent and disagreement. Legend seems to suggest that the African American clergy of the time were united in their efforts when in fact, some of them left before that first meeting had even concluded, others questioned the wisdom of the boycott, and still others agreed to preach on the matter that Sunday.

So, this morning, I wanted to hold up some of these departures all of which are cleared up by Mrs. Parks in her autobiography entitled simply, My Story. She wrote that she doesn’t hate – doesn’t find it useful. But the woman was a realist. She had no use for those people, white people, who kept African Americans down. Yet, she also understood that in order for the movement to be effective, there had to be significant numbers of empathetic white people involved. Mrs. Parks noted that laws have been changed and these changes have offered all people of color, needed protections. However, she observed that changed laws don’t change hearts. In 1992, when she wrote this story of her life, she noted that we still have a long way to go on that front.

But she celebrated the accomplishments of the civil rights movement and the distance African Americans have traveled since her grandparents were born into slavery. Hers was a measured celebration, however. She dedicated her life to the cause of equality and took notice of others who were doing the same.

Here is a story for us to ponder: When Nelson Mandela was released from Robben Island in 1990, you may remember he visited the United States just four months later. He wanted to make sure that the US maintained sanctions against South Africa as apartheid had not yet been dismantled. His trip included a stop in Detroit, where Rosa Parks had been living for many years by that time. Jesse Jackson told a reporter that Mandela wanted to visit Detroit because that was where Joe Louis was from and Nelson Mandela was an admirer of Joe Louis. And of course, that’s where Rosa Parks was, he added. Ironically, the local planning committee had neglected to invite her to the airport to welcome Nelson & Winnie Mandela upon their arrival. It was through the effort of one particular community leader that Mrs. Parks was able to be there, waiting. She was embarrassed by all this fuss, assuring everyone that it was okay. “They just forgot me,” she said.

But on that day, she was the escorted to the tarmac, among hundreds of others who had gone to the airport to get a glimpse of Mandela. She was uncomfortable in crowds and grew increasingly embarrassed and at one point said, “He won’t know me.” Well, Mandela stepped off the plane and through its door, waving to the crowd shouting, “Viva Nelson!” Rosa Parks was just five years older than Mandela. Already on in years, Mandela slowly made his way through the receiving line. Biographer Douglas Brinkley describes what happened next this way, “

Suddenly he froze, staring openmouthed in wonder. Tears filled his eyes as he walked up to the small old woman with her hair in two silver braids crossed atop her head. And in a low, melodious tone, Nelson Mandela began to chant, ‘Ro-sa Parks. Ro-sa Parks. Ro-sa Parks,’ until his voice crescendoed into a rapturous shout: “Ro-sa Parks!”
Then the two brave old souls, their lives so distant yet their dreams so close, fell into each other’s arms, rocking back and forth in a long, joyful embrace. And in that poignant, redemptive moment, the enduring dignity of the undaunted afforded mankind rare proof of its own progress.

The enduring dignity of Rosa Parks is embedded in the way she recalled her court date, three days after her arrest. She said, “I was not especially nervous. I knew what I had to do.”

We must continue learning these stories because they help us to both understand the world as it was – as it really was – and at the same time, get a glimpse of the world people like Rosa Parks envisioned. It is not unlike the world we hope for here in this congregation. The approaches to remedy injustice were so thoughtful, prayerful, and executed through fear and with steely resolve.

As she walked into the courthouse, Mrs. Parks heard a young woman’s voice say, “They’ve messed with the wrong one now.” We have to all be willing to be the wrong one to mess with. Len Salter, a young adult who was raised in this congregation, told me a story last week. He told me that he’d gotten into his first physical fight. Len had been watching a football game with some friends when one young man began to make racist jokes. Len told him to knock it off. He wouldn’t. A pizza delivery guy came and he happened to be Black. Still, the young man kept on with his racist trash talk. Len was appropriately appalled and he left but not without making it clear to all that he was leaving because he was offended. When Len got home, he realized that he’d left his cell phone at his friend’s home. When he returned, the racist guest really laid it on thick and in that moment, Len hauled off and hit him. Indeed the fight eventually was taken out into the street.

Now, I didn’t quite how to fully respond to this story. I am after all, Len’s minister and the story begged for a response. Of course, I am proud of his moral clarity and courage and I told him so. That is really the bottom line. But I didn’t know how I felt about a violent response to what was certainly a violence unleashed by an ignorant young man. Len’s story has stayed on my mind since he shared it with me. And then I read Rosa Park’s autobiography. I’ve come to understand a different dimension of violence and in that learning, I’ve come to understand something of myself. Perhaps in just a few cases, violence does need to be met with violence.

But this is a topic for another sermon.

When I called Len to ask his permission to tell this story, I read to him what I’d written so far. I had remembered him saying he had been surprised when he initially hit the guy and that’s what I had written. He stopped me and said, “No, I wasn’t at all surprised in the moment. I was surprised the next morning!”

And that’s the point for today. Like Rosa Parks, Len simply did what he knew he had to do. In that moment, he was the wrong guy to mess with.

You don’t always have to take a swipe at someone in order to be the wrong person to mess with. But there is a range of ways to make that clear in the face of racism.

How will you become or continue to be for others like Rosa Parks was on December 1, 1955: the wrong person to mess with? What will you do to build that land with your sisters and brothers where justice shall roll down like water?

In the *words of Bob Dylan, “Trails of troubles / Roads of battles / Paths of victory / We shall walk".

Amen.

*Bob Dylan, Paths of Victory, copyright © 1964; renewed 1992 Special Rider Music

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