Her legacy is secure, her mission unfinished
By the Rev. Jesse Jackson
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
MONTGOMERY, ALA. – For our sister beloved Rosa, we must adore, admire and love her and not romaticize her mission. Hers is an act of defiance, challenging the prevailing right-wing political, legal and religious order. She challenged states’ rights unarmed in the heart of the Confederacy.
Her mission was to even the playing field, to afford all Americans equal protection under the law, to gain and defend civil rights – she saught the one big tent America.
Many of her former adveraries have changed stripes or parties, but not their violent anti-civil rights, anti-labor, anti-gender equality and anti-poor agenda. To be on her freedom train requires the courage and the vision to defy unjust law, take the risks and live with the consequences.
After 58 years of legal, racist, segregationist apartheid law, upon continuous charges by the NAACP, led by Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley, Charles Hamilton Houston, Dr. John Hope Franklin and Dr. Kenneth Clark, the court reversed itself from the 1896 apartheid decision which succeeded slavery.
May 17, 1954 was the biggest victory since the abolishment of slavery in 1865. But it had no immediate on-the-ground effect. States continued to defy the law and vilify the court as legislating and engineering change and not being strict constructionists.
Racial segregation remained in our schools, transportation, trains, public housing, work places, voting. We lived without the umbrella of protection of the law.
Emmti Till was lynched August 28, 1955 (eight years to the day before the March on Washington in 1963). The lynch mob was not prosecuted and the FBI did not investigate.
His mother brought his blooded, water-marked body back to Chicago. One hundred thousand people demonstrated and passed his body. Afterwards, they were never the same.
Jet and the Black Press told his story. There was an emotional uprising.
I once asked Ms. Rosa parks why did she not go to the back of the bus, given the risks. She said, “I thought about Emmit Till, and I could not go back.” She said, “My legs and feet were not hurting, that is a sterotype. I felt violated. I paid the same fare as others. I was not going back.”
Her dominate feature was not that she was a seamstress. She was not arrested for sewing. She was a freedom fighter, an NAACP officer at a time when the NAACP was banished from most of the South. Most teachers could not join and keep their jobs.
The states defied federal law, she defied the state law. She took the test, paid the price and the law failed. She was arrested for defiant behavior. She went counterculture. She resented the sign above the driver’s head, “Colored seat from the rear, Whites from the front and violators will be prosecuted.” She chose, with resolve and courage, to fearlessly face the option of being fired, jailed or killed to test the law on December 1, 1955.
An immediate aftereffect was the emergence of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A one-year boycott, his house bombed – they were threatened, she won the legal case. It took 10 years of testing, 1957, Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine, the ‘60s sit-ins, the assassination of Medgar Evars and others, the ‘63 march, the killings of Schwerner, Goodman and Cheyney, the Birmingham bombings and the march from Selma to Montgomery to end the reign of legal, state-sponsored terror.
We, with a narrow view, say Rosa Parks would not get up and let the white man have her seat. The white bus driver would not drive off, the white police arrested her, but they were all victims of racist, states’ rights law as well. They were following the legal, political, religious edict of their day; she was following the moral law. She chose Calvary over convenience.
If they would not have done their jobs, they would have lost their jobs, and if she would have gotten up, she would have lost her dignity.
The legal changes of ‘64 and ‘65 allowed both to have dignity and decency. The guy sitting behind her on that bus, the bus driver who demanded that she move, and the arresting officer must feel awful. History condemned them. Their political leaders placed them there.
Now Alabama and Auburn can play, black and white, together. We can choose uniform color over skin color in that game, because the new law protects our shared dignity.
Changing the laws and the culture did not take place automatically nor inevitably. It took demonstrations, sacrifice and martyrs. Because with affirmative action and pell grants and no more political mileage for governors blocking school doors, we can now have a black secretary of state, we can now sit on the front of buses, in class rooms, live in a neighborhood of our choice, Auburn could be No. 1 last year, Alabama could be undefeated this year and not face the perdicament that Bear Bryant faced, playing USC and Nebraska without the best talent in the state and being humiliated.
Oh, what a morning Rosa Parks ushered in. There are those who will honor her this week. She is their trophy but she is our morning star, our 1955 liberation Christmas present. Oh, what a morning this noble woman has helped to usher in.
We must be aware of wolves in sheep’s clothing, who continue to try to defeat her purpose.
Rosa Parks’ life is over – Rosa Parks’ legacy is secure, but her mission is unfinished. We have gone from the back of the bus in Montgomery to the back of rescue in New Orleans. We appreciate the ceremony that the Congress is affording us, transforming her remains around the country, letting her remains lie in honor in the Rotunda, but Secretary Rice and President Bush, we really want the Voting Rights Act extended as a living memorial.
Her mission is unfininshed. The struggle falls upon we the living. She is gone on to glory. We are left to tell the story and keep sitting in and marching and fighting.
Sweet angel, take your rest, take your rest. Take your heavenly flight. You made your reservations, you pre-paid your ticket, now you can sit where you choose on the bus, you can sit at the welcome table. When you get tired of sitting, you can just walk around heaven all day.
We will see you in the morning.
