October 27, 2005

The death of civil rights legend Rosa Parks is an occasion for our nation to look back on her legacy.

Parks died Oct. 24 in her home in Detroit at the age of 92. Fifty years ago, on Dec. 1, 1955, she refused to give up her seat to a white patron on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala. She was arrested. The incident touched off the historic Montgomery bus boycott, and a new phase of the modern civil rights movement was born.

The false lesson that many people took from Parks' heroic action is that one lone individual can make change. In fact, Parks would have been the first to remind us that her actions were not wholly spontaneous and she did not act alone.

By 1955, she was a veteran of Southern black freedom struggles. She was an official of the local branch of the NAACP and had recently attended a civil rights workshop at the Highlander Folk School, an interracial labor activist center in Tennessee.

Parks had been in discussions with colleagues like union organizer E. D. Nixon and liberal white activist Virginia Durr about the impact a protest on the city buses could have. Once she made her stand on that fateful day in December, other activists went into action.

A lesser-known heroine of the historic Montgomery bus boycott was Jo Ann Robinson, a professor at the all-black Alabama State College and a leader of the Women's Political Council of Montgomery.

This group of black activist women had lobbied the local bus company and city officials for years to change its racist policy. Robinson circulated a flier calling for a boycott to protest Parks' arrest, and then contacted local ministers for support. The actions of the women's council led to a 380-day boycott that empowered and emboldened civil rights activists throughout the South.

The boycott was not a single event by a single individual but a collective action and protracted process.

After Parks' initial action, the boycott required the courage, stamina and organization of many others to sustain it.

Parks was a seamstress at a downtown department store who knew the meaning of hard work. So did thousands of black women who were domestic workers and relied on public buses to get to work every day. Their sacrifices were the backbone of the protest. Carpools were organized to transport boycotters. Funds were raised to aid those fired or arrested. Lawyers -- both local and national -- donated their services.

In December 1956, the success of the protest led to the desegregation of the buses.

By 1960, young people were restless with the slow pace of change but still inspired by the example of Parks and others. Instead of a boycott, they staged sit-ins to protest Jim Crow segregation at Southern lunch counters.

Rosa Parks was midwife to it all, along with women like Ella Baker, Septima Clark and Fannie Lou Hamer.

Parks was active before the boycott and continued to be active afterward. She lent her name and waning energies to a variety of progressive causes over the years between 1955 and 2005. She opposed wars, supported workers' rights, indicted persistent racism, decried the growth of prisons and the decline of public schools.

Rosa Parks made her mark on history. Now this generation must do the same by continuing to advance the cause that Parks has come to symbolize.

Barbara Ransby is an associate professor in the Department of African American Studies and History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of the award-winning biography "Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision" (UNC Press, 2003). She can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.