Rosa Parks Birthday Celebration ~ The Rock Senior and Youth Center ~ Stockton, CA

Rosa Parks, the Mother of the Modern Civil Rights Movement, sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the first successful mass protest of began on a cold, crisp Alabama winters evening, December 1, 1955.

Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a city bus sparked a change in America that is still happening today, even in Stockton, California, ranked as the most miserable place in America, according to Forbes....

Her subsequent arrest resulted in a one day boycott led by the Women's Political Caucus and after two contentious community meetings a previously unknown, local minister, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was selected to lead an ongoing effort.

Parks' arrest and the community-driven protest that followed drew national and international media attention and led to the desegregation of Montgomery's buses in December of 1956, markin over a year of sacrafice by untold thousands of determined Montgomery, Alabama residents.

Rosa Parks is mischaracterized as a simple woman who chose not to stand because she had tired feet, it was not the first time of challenging the immoral, unethical and unjust transportation system in Montgomery, Alabama, nor was she the only one.

Rosa Parks' long history of activism is erased from our collective consciousness. Parks served as statewide Secretary of the Alabama Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a member since the early 1940s, working on a voter registration campaign, leading the local NAACP Youth Council, and attending a leadership conference organized by civil rights visionary, Ella Baker.

It would be Parks' work as a young activist in the NAACP that would lead her to investigate a horrible incident of abduction and rape that had taken place in Abbeville, Alabama.

Reviewing a historical study by Danielle McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street, details how Rosa Parks risked her own life to spearhead a movement on behalf of Recy Taylor, a young African American wife, mother, and sharecropper who had been kidnapped by seven white men and raped at gunpoint in 1944.

Although local authorities would refuse to indict anyone for the crime, this case would animate Parks' quest for justice. Just weeks before her arrest, Parks attended a workshop at the Highlander Folk School, an egalitarian, interracial institution founded in the nineteen-thirties as a training ground for union activists, which became an important center for civil rights activists.

At the workshop, attendees were asked to think about what they could do as individuals to challenge the inequalities faced by African Americans in the South. Rosa Parks found her answer on Montgomery's segregated buses just a few weeks later.

The majority of blacks in Montgomery had witnessed or personally been harassed on the buses like Rosa Parks. The city code segregated buses by race, not only preventing black passengers from sitting next to or across the aisle from white, it also required black passengers to pay their fares at the front of the bus, disembark, and then enter at the back door.

Hostile white male bus drivers would not only verbally harass black passengers; also they would frequently drive away before black passengers could reach the second set of doors.

So when news of the arrest of Rosa Parks swept through black Montgomery, the protest waged in her name received a groundswell of support from all sectors of the community. Despite the hardships of walking great distances and facing white violence and harassment, the protest was groundbreaking.

Rosa Parks' status as a respected, deeply religious, middle class “fair skinned, black women was crucial to the success of the movement.

Historically, "respectable" black women have been the most effective warriors in the fight against the illogical practice of racial segregation. It was hard to argue that whites needed protection from black women passengers, the same women who cleaned white homes, sewed clothing for white patrons, and watched white children. But Parks highlighted the dangers black women faced at the hand of brutal bus drivers and inequitable segregation laws. In many ways, Rosa Parks was best suited for the job.

Worldwide, we remember Rosa Parks and prepare to celebrate a year-long effort to celebrate the Centennial of her birth, let's remember her as a tireless advocate for truth, justice and righteousness.

The Rock Senior and Youth Center
Downtown Stockton, California
Friday, Feb. 3, 2012
6:00 p.m. ~ 9:00 p.m.