Representing the narrative arc of the popular story of the civil rights movie. We are going back to our topic of origin points, with the objective of putting those events and contacts, but also troubling the idea of them as origin points. Last week we discussed brown v. Board of education, the decision, response, the impact, and also the legacy. I want to talk more about the legacy as we go forward. We will not do that today. Spent time we talking about the emmett till case, the lynching of emmett till in august of 1955. We used a mix of secondary and primary sources to consider how ideologies of race, gender and justice impacted that case and the lived experience of the people in the case. I wanted to take a moment to pull out and say that this week, what happens this week that is of significance in relationship to the emmett till case. Anybody paying attention . Yeah . Ahead. Student [indiscernible] legislation. Prof. Greer they passed the emmett till antilynching act, it designates lynching as a hate crime under federal law. This legislation is coming 65 years after emmett tills lynching in 120 years after Congress First considered antilynching legislation. That is 120 years of congress passng to, choosing not to such legislation. , congress did see fit to apologize to the descendents of lynching victims, but it took another 15 years for the senate and the house to pass the legislation, and it will go to the white house for signing by president trump. You can imagine there are a lot of responses going onto this. The prominent one is why now . People are asking, is this commemorative . Is it a cause for celebration or a cause for concern . Is this preemptive . What is the context now making feasible within congress when it has been 120 years and that hasnt been the case . I want to take a moment to point out ida b wells. A lot of people are talking about the antilynching legislation and asking about wells. Ida b wells was an activist and journalist in the late 19th century who publicly and doggedly and consistently was condemning and publicizing lynching. Most notably through her publication, a red record. She did this at great personal cost. Her printing outfit was burned down and she was run out of town. You can see why people might say not that emmett till should not be attached, but where is the recognition of ida b wells . We will come back to wells when talking about montgomery. Coming back to origin points, i wanted to point that out. Today we focus on the montgomery bus boycott and i want to put it in the timeline i showed you last time. Have the brown v. Board of education decision in may of 1964. Then we have brown v. Board of education two the following year, and the emmett till lynching in 1955. Anil think a lot of people i dont think a lot of people realize how close the bus boycott was to emmett till lynching. That is a little bit of context for you, to put it in a visual form. Todayl use the readings to consider the bus boycott. The readings give you a lot of information about events and circumstances leading up to, but not so much information necessarily about the boycott. We will also talk about that and we can continue the conversation 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 we have talked about, montgomery is most often cited as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in the popular narrative. It is assigned to the popular narrative of the boycott itself, in the larger narrative, to be somewhat problematic. I want to dig into the myth, the story of the montgomery bus boycott. In doing that, i think an effective way of doing that is looking at a central figure in the myth, rosa parks. Callt to look at what i the mythic rosa parks. I want to make a real distinction between rosa parks as a person, as a woman, and rosa parks as an icon. We will be talking about both. Those are two separate things. I want to ask you if you can give me, some of you may have more information about rosa parks. Have a lot more Information Available to us now. But if you could 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. Anybody . Think what i learned about her in Elementary School was definitely she refused to give up her seat. She was an ordinary woman coming it was a, and manifestation of the common attitudes of the time. She was an ordinary woman and a martyr come honestly. That is how it was portrayed. Prof. Greer she became a martyr in that sense. Anyone else . Student i guess the way i learned about it is that she was the catalyst for this movement, as if she was the only woman or person who had been arrested for not giving up their seat. As if it was a single incident that happened, and it was her. Prof. Greer yeah. As much as the montgomery bus boycott is seen as the beginning of the civil rights woman, she is seen as the beginning of the bus boycott. Thats where the title mother of the Civil Rights Movement comes from. On our best day, how many of us could hope for such a title. But going off of those points, she was typically described as an elderly woman. She was 42. I need that not to be elderly. She was not elderly. She was described as an elderly seamstress, many accounts did not give her a name. An elderly seamstress with tired feet who spontaneously took a stand by sitting down and singlehandedly sparked the modern black freedom movement. Any of want to deny her her importance. Parks that,rosa with the best of intentions, my mother introduced me to when i was young. I held onto that picture all the way through 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. Not just crumble, but become really frustrating to me. Ideal of parksis frustrates or negates her actual history, particularly her activist history. In the recent years, we have had historians who are really working or have really worked the breakdown of the idea to give us a more complicated picture. I want to point to these two books in particular. Have anyone read any of them . At the dark end of the street, and the rebellious life of mrs. Rosa parks. That already tells you it will be a corrective narrative. You have a desire to know more about rosa parks as a woman and activist, these are great sources. I am drawing on them some to do that with you today. Want to use these books or use the information i have from books in my own research to deconstruct that myth. If youing to ask you know more about rosa parks, or if what you are holding onto you can just raise your hand, you dont have to answer if you are holding onto this typical, iconic idea. That gets celebrated in black history month. For how many of you is that the image you are most familiar with . Wow, ok. Surprising,ly not because i think that image andulates in newspapers Childrens Books, so as not surprising but it is troubling to me. How i want to point out is simple and inaccurate that representation is. I will start at the beginning. Beginning in the 1930s, rosa parks was campaigning on behalf of the scottsboro boys with her husband. Melanie brought up the scottsboro boys in our last class in terms of these nine africanamerican men accused of raping two white women on a train. It was a long, drawnout case in which many of them spent years and years in prison. Rosa parks was actively campaigning on their behalf. Which is notable, because these were africanamericans defended the communist party. Right there, that is some verses subversive activity. Dont worry about writing this down, i will send it to you immediately after. Just listen to the story. Particular if this is the first time you have had any encounter with this woman. I promise you. As a lookout on the steps of her own home while they were naacp meetings held in her house, where she discusses she had never seen so many guns come on her kitchen table. She never seen so many guns until the meetings were in her house. 1943,ined the naacp in either the second or third woman in montgomery to do that. A mustame the secretary immediately because nobody else wanted to do it. That in and of itself is a woman as a woman was unusual and montgomery at the time. The otheral, one of women was you can see some modeling going on there. This is key. In her role as a secretary of the naacp in the 1940s and montgomery, alabama or alabama, she traveled around the state by herself to gather evidence or proof or testimony from blacks who had witnessed or experienced white on black violence. Think about that. How many of you have seen a picture of rosa parks . She is not a formidable woman. She is a black woman traveling by herself through the jim crow that manyet material 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. The 1940s onin behalf of sexually abused black women. Very openly. Bookiswhat is about. Harris really traces that role of parks on behalf of sexually abused lack women, largely by white men. She made repeated attempts to register to vote in the 1940s. Repeated attempts. As we will talk about and as im sure you know to some extent, this could be a dangerous act at this point in time. She protested segregation on the buses before 1945. She was kicked off a bus by the same bus driver almost a decade theier for resisting instructions of that bus driver. Was a featurede speaker at the naacp state convention in 1948. I dont think that is an image we have of rosa parks. When i was doing my research, 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, she is southern. It just surprised me. I had never heard her. Speaking before a convention crowd in 1948. Very public. She trained at the Highlander Folk School in tennessee. This was before her arrest. She did a two week training in desegregation at the Highlander Folk School, which was pegged as communist but it was not a communist school. It was a leadership training institution. Precisely because of brown v. Board of education that workshops were being held. It was to help learn how to facilitate that process. Hopefully peacefully. She never fully embraced nonviolence, and she is on the record about that. She is on the record about not knowing if threatening with violence or messed with in a particular way, that she could turn the other cheek. She supported some of the nonviolent activities of the Civil Rights Movement but never fully supported nonviolence. For how many of you is that surprising . Right . That is, again, troubling to me. But not at all surprising. My question, and i will allow for a couple of answers, why do you think there is no right answer because you are the ones who know why do you think there is such an investment, or call her, parks as i has survived so long, well after her death . She died in 2005. Why does that have such currency, that idea . Student i think when i learned about this, i think i was in Elementary School, so 8, 9, 10 years old. I think it is easier for her to be a onedimensional character in the story we tell children when we are first learning about this history, than it is for her to be a complex human being that has more to offer the story than just sitting on a bus. Also thinking is about how a lot of us learned about this in Elementary School, very strategic on public education, to tell children and push this narrative that black people get what they want if they are nonviolent and pacified. There are so many Historic Events we learn about that are achieved through violent means in European Countries and by white people generally did generally. Is a member dead as catalyst for a Larger Movement and we are told this person was nonviolent, peaceful, old, tired woman, when that was not the case. Maybe that is strategic. Prof. Greer at least politically significant if not intended. Anyone else want to speak to that . Look at you. [laughter] student i also think this narrative presents her as a political agent, which even broader for women of all races, that is something that is not mentioned, that she is someone who was very strategic and what she did. Even in terms of what organizations she associated with. It shows her agency in a way that we are reluctant to talk about regarding women. Prof. Greer yeah. Remember i told you to draw name mie tilladford ma bradford forward. We have to think about how parks presented herself. We will talk more about that later in time. I agree with all of you to an extent. The montgomery bus boycott i think is one of our greatest national fabrications. Its a nice story of good versus and, david and goliath, good americans bear out. Those aberrant, racist southerners, but good americans bear out. When you have a fairytale, you have simple good versus bad, and rosa parks is the hero along with Martin Luther king. They are the hero of this fairytale. Aboutny of you learned rosa parks for the first time in Elementary School . Ok. How many of you learned anything else about her after . Ok. Its always interesting to me, because i think you are right in the sense that people think that children need simple characters. To me, the sad thing is that is when, i think, minds, attitudes are very flexible and can take in complex information. I often use the example of when i was in badge school, a Childrens Book amount about Martin Luther king and my professor brought it in and read it to us. On april 4, 1968, Martin Luther king died. Which is not an accurate, right in accurate, right . He was assassinated. It showed a hesitancy to deal in that material. Point people to grimms fairy tales, which are horrifying and scary. But theres the idea that we need the sanitized stories for children, and i think that would be fine, but it would be ok if there was at any other point where you were learning, building on that story. My experiences and im sure it is different in different regions and different schools, but my experience is that most people dont then have more education on the Civil Rights Movement and rosa parks. I learned about rosa parks when i was young, preschool probably, and in Elementary School. Later i think in middle school or high school, i learned how she was not the first person to give up her seat. I think that is really interesting. In one of the articles about the montgomery bus boycott, they said that rosa parks had the caliber of count of character to get the city to rally around them. I was always curious about why rosa parks. Interesting was that we focus specifically on her we dont talk about the back story when we are learning about her. Prof. Greer and let me speak to that, lets go through that. One of the reasons i focus on ,he symbolic, mythic rosa parks or start they are, is because i think she is propping up a bigger myth of the montgomery myth, and i would argue that is ring of securing obscu information about the bus boycott that would be helpful to us now. Information about organizing, how funded things, what formed their theories or strategies. I want to speak to that because that is a huge question why . Why do we not have that information . The montgomery mets, here are some aspects. Montgomery myths, here are some aspects. Enough. Ed has had tot she was the first one take the stand and the boycott was unprecedented and spontaneous. That is part of what allows it to have the container idea of the Civil Rights Movement. Like suddenly there was organizing. Martin luther king jr. Organized the boycott, the masses followed king, the masses walked, the boycott ended segregated buses and the boycott was short. I wanted to tick through those and speak to those. The first one being the idea that parks was the first. That she was the first woman, black woman to resist segregated public transportation. Thereot even true are examples from the previous century, one of them being ida b wells, who protested on a railroad. She sued and won. Sojourner truth protested on d. C. Streetcars be it and homer where plessy versus ferguson comes from. We have examples of African Americans boycotting segregated transportation before. In birmingham, alabama, we have two examples. I only wrote one down. Kart in 1943. She was a teenager and a bus driver treated her poorly, she spit on him and cursed him, and she spent 30 days in jail. There was another woman who got a shoving match with a white man on the bus. She cursed him while she was riding the bus and when she got off the bus, she was arrested and sentenced to spend time in jail. To pointstgomery, several of you have made, there incidentsl documented of women doing exactly what parks did. Some of them did more than once. Epsierst one being worthy. Whoargued with the driver, followed her, spit on her, beat her, and according to eyewitness testimony, she gave as good as she got. I dont know what happened to her but i am guessing she spent time in jail. Sat inta brinson front of a white couple on a bus and was targeted by the bus driver, but she avoided jail because the white couple agreed to move. What you have to understand about segregated buses, generally speaking, there are 10 seats in the front and 10 in the back. E me, there was a no mans land in the middle. The white people sat in the front. What is important is that bus drivers had police powers. That makes resisting doubly risky. They could do what a Police Officer could do in those circumstances, including violence. Parksher examples, rosa resisted, a decade before. One of the worst cases is viola white who in 1943 of you to give up her seat, the driver try to remove her, she resisted, she was beaten, arrested, jailed, found guilty, she appealed the case, and as reprisal, white kid white Police Officers kidnapped her 16yearold daughter and raped her in a cemetery. That was for her resisting. It tells you the significance of crossing that line. , as the article pointed out, in the same year, in 1965, you have claudette a 15yearold teenager who refuses to give