Going to go back for discussion of origin points, our favorites light which you are going to be so sick of representing the narrative arc of the popular story of the Civil Rights Movement and we are going back to our topic of origin points again with the objective of troubling it, putting those events in context but also troubling the idea of them as origin points. Last week we discussed brown versus board of education, we discussed the decision, response, the impact but also the legacy. I want to talk more about the legacy as we go forward. But we are not going to do that today. And then on tuesday, we spent time 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 impacted the live experience of the people in that case. I want to take a moment to pull out and say that this week, what happened this week that is of significance in relationship to the emmett till case. Anybody paying attention . Yeah . Go ahead. Passing legislation. Yes. They passed the emmett till antilynching act, that doesnt days lynching as a hate crime under federal law. This legislation is coming 65 years after tells lynching and 120 years after Congress First considered anti lynching legislation. So that is 125 years of Congress Failing to, choosing not to, pass such legislation. In 2005, Congress First did see fit to apologize to the descendants of lynching victims but it took another 15 years for both 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 can imagine that there are a lot of responses going on to this. The prominent one is why now . 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 it hasnt been the case . I just want to take a moment to point out ida b. Wells. Because a lot of people are point talking about this antilynching legislation are asking what about wells . Ida b. Wells was an activist any journalist in the late 19 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 burnt down and she was run out of town. You can understand why some people might say certainly not that till should be but where is the recognition of ida b. Wells . We will come back to wells actually when talking about montgomery. So going back to the origin points, i just wanted to point that out. Today we will focus on the montgomery bus boycott and i want to put that in the timeline i that we were talking about or that i showed you this time. So we have the brown versus board of education decision in may of 1954. Immediately after the anne brown versus board of education the following year may 1955. And the emmett till lynching in august of 1955, i dont think a lot of people understand how close to the till lynching the montgomery bus boycott was, you have rosa parks being arrested on december 1st of 1955, that was a thursday. And then the following monday on december 5th, montgomery bus boycotts begins. So thats just a little bit of context for you. To put it in a visual form. And so we are going to use the readings today to consider to consider the bus boycott, and these readings gave you a lot of information about events and circumstances leading up to but not so much information is fairly about the boycott. So we will also talk about that and we can continue the conversation in our next lecture as well, and certainly people have questions so i want to focus on montgomery, because more than any of the other origin events that we have talked about, montgomery is most often cited as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement within the popular narrative. And that i find the popular narrative of the boycott itself within this larger narrative, to be somewhat pop problematic. And i want to dig into that mid, where that story of the montgomery bus boycott. In doing that, i think it effective way of doing that is looking to a central figure in that mid, rosa parks. I want to look at what i call the mythic rosa parks. And i want to make a real distinction between rosa parks as a person, as a woman, and then rosa parks as an icon. We are going to be talking about both. But those are two separate things and so i want to ask you if you can give me, some of you may have a lot more information about rosa parks. We have a lot more Information Available to us now. But if you just give me a sense of the popular narrative, the enduring narrative or idea of rosa parks, whose you likely learned when you were in Elementary School, or typically celebrated through black history month. The anybody want to go up there . I think what line what i learned about her in Elementary School was definitely, she refused to give a perceived. And she was just an ordinary woman coming from work and it was just a manifestation of the common attitudes of the time. And the common, shes just an ordinary woman and a martyr come honestly. That is how it was portrayed. She definitely became a martyr in that sense, anyone else . I guess the way i learned about it was that 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 yet. As much as the montgomery bus boycott to see is the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, she is seen as the beginning of the bus boycott. Thats where that 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 both those points, she was typically described as an elderly woman. She was 40. Two i need that not to be elderly. All right . She was not elderly. She was described as an elderly seamstress, many of those accounts didnt even give her name. An elderly seamstress with tired feet who spontaneously took a stand by sitting down and then singlehandedly sparked the modern black freedom movement. I dont want to deny her any of her importance. This is actually the rosa parks that, with the best of intentions, my mother introduced me to when i was very young. And i held on to that picture all the way through college, all the way through my history classes in college, well into graduate studies, and 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. Because i think that this idea of parks really frustrates or negates her actual history, particularly her activist. History. In recent years weve had historians who are really working or who 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. Anybody read any of them . At the darkened of the street, by Daniel Maguire and the rebellious life of mrs. Rosa parks. The rebellious life of mrs. Rosa parks already tells you that it it is going to be a corrective narrative. If you have a desire to know more about was a parks as a woman and as an activist, these are great sources. And i actually drying on them some to do that with you today. So i want to use these books or use the information i have from books and i 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 you are holding on to, you can just raise your hand, you dont have to answer if if what you are holding on to, for how many people you are holding on to this kind of typical, iconic idea. They get celebrated in black history month. For how many of you is that the image you are most familiar with . Says while. Okay. All right so that is really not surprising because i think that image circulates in newspapers and museums and definitely an Elementary Schools Childrens Books and all of those, so its not surprising to me but it is troubling to me. It is very troubling. What i wanted to point out is how simple and inaccurate that representation is. So i would just start at the beginning. Beginning in the 1930s, rosa parks was campaigning on behalf of the scott schoolboys with her husband. Right, melanie brought up the scouts for a boys in our last class in terms of these nine African American men who were accused of raping two white women on a train. And then it was a long drawn up case in which many of them spent years and years and years in prison prison. So rosa parks was actively campaigning on their behalf. And which is notable, because also as melanie brought up these were African Americans who were defended by the communist party. So that right there, that is some subversive activity. Dont worry about running this down, i will send it to you immediately after. Listen to the story. Right, just listen to the story. Particularly if its the first time youve actually had any encounter with this woman, all right . I promise you. So she sat as the look out on the steps to her own home while they were meetings in aid to naacp meetings held in her house, where she discusses she had never seen so many guns on her kitchen table. She had never seen so many guns 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, 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 the time. Less and less unusual one of the other women of the tour three was her mother. So you can see that there are some modeling going on there. This is key. In her role as the secretary of the naacp in the 19 forties and in mongolia marie alabama or in alabama, she traveled around the state by herself together evidence or proof or testimony from black suede goodness 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. 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 that she is doing. But in contrast to the image we have of her. She beginning in the 1940s she organized on the behalf of sexually abused black women, sexually assaulted abused black women, very openly. Very openly. That is what the ohara says book is about. Actually both of them touch on the, but the oharas really traces that history of parks really advocating on behalf of sexually abused black women abused largely by white man. And largely in the offices of white supremacy. 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 too could be a dangerous act at this point in time. Cf i had never heard her, but here she is speaking before a convention crowd in 1948. Very public. Very public. She trained at the Highlander Folk School in tennessee. This is before her arrest she did a twoweek 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. It and it was precisely because of brown versus board of education that workshops were being held. It was to help learn how to facilitate that process. Hopefully peacefully. She never fully embraced non violence, and she is on the record about the. 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 certainly supported some of the nonviolent activities of the Civil Rights Movement as we think about it but she never fully supported or embraced or non violence. So how many of you raise of hands is that surprising . Right . That is, again, troubling to me. But not at all surprising. So my question then and i am going to allow for a couple of questions were 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 that that mythic parks is like as im calling her, has taken, has survived so long well after her death . She died in 2005. Why do you think that has such currency, that idea . One i think, when i learned about this i think i was in Elementary School, so eight, nine, ten years old. And i think its a lot easier for her to be a one dimensional character in the story we we tell children when we are first learning about this history, then it is for her to be a complex human being that has more to offer, the story than just sitting on a bus. Much to me its also thinking about how a lot of us learned about this in Elementary School, very strategic on like public education, to tell says 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 buy white people generally, revolutionary wise. The and obviously this is a catalyst for a Larger Movement and we are told this person was nonviolent, peaceful, old, tired woman, when thats not the case. I think thats very strategic. At least politically significant if not intended. Others, anyone else want to speak to . That. I also think that this narrative presents her as a political agent, which something that even broader for women of all races that is something that is not mentioned, that she is someone who is very strategic in 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. Yeah. I remember i told you to draw bradford forward and thinking about parks in the actions as she would take in the moment. That is just months beforehand, is just mark months beforehand. We also have to think about how parks might have been presenting herself, women talk more about that in a different time. But i agree with all of you, to an extent, the montgomery bus boycott i think is one of our greatest national fairytales. Its just a really nice story of and its popular form, of good versus evil, david and goliath, and that good americans bear out. Those aberrant racist southerners, but good americans bear out. In that sense and i think when you have a fairytale you have very simple good forces bad, and rosa parks is the hero along with Martin Luther king. They are the hero of this fairytale. Its always interesting to me though 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 that you are right maybe in the sense that people think that children need simple characters. To me, the sad thing is that is when i think minds, altitudes are very flexible i can take in complex information. Often used the example of when i was in graduate school this Childrens Book came out about melissa king and my professor brought it in and he read it to us. And its it and on april 4th 1968, Martin Luther king died. Says which is not inaccurate. Right . But he was assassinated. And that showed a hesitancy to deal in that material. Then a point grimace fairytales jar horrifying and scary. But there is this idea that we need the sanitized stories for children and i think that would be fine but that would be okay if there was at any other point where you are learning building on that story. In my experience is, and im sure this is different to 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. Yes. So i learned about was a parks when i was young, preschool probably, and also get an Elementary School, and then later i think in middle school or high school i learned about how she was not the first person to give up her seat. And so i think that something thats really interesting. In one of the articles about the origins of the montgomery bus boycott, they said that rosa parks had the caliber of character we needed to get the city to rally around behind us. I thought that was kind of the moment i was always curious about rosa parks, this happened before was a parks, which the article laid out. I thought it was interesting that we focus will specifically on her and we dont talk about the back story when were learning about her. Let me speak to that, lets go through the because one of the reasons i focus on this symbolic mystical rosa parks, or start their is because i think she is propping up this bigger mid of the montgomery mid, and then i would argue 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 fund things, information about 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 . So, the montgomery myth, here are some aspects of it, dont go writing this down. I will send it to. That rosa parks is this accident, shes had enough, shes tired, she is going home, shes not taking it anymore. That she was the first one who took that stand that the boycott was unprecedented and that the boycott is spontaneous. That is part of what allows for us to have the container idea of the Civil Rights Movement. Like suddenly there was organizing on this issue of civil rights. Martin luther king junior should say organize the boycott, the masses followed king, the messes walked, the boycott ended segrega