Read 21 Great Leaders: Learn Their Lessons, Improve Your Influence Online
Authors: Pat Williams
James McCauley’s work took him away from the family for weeks at a time—and around the time Rosa turned two, he stopped coming home. “My mother and father never got back together,” she recalled. “They just couldn’t coordinate their lives together, because he wanted to travel and she wanted to be situated in a permanent home.”
6
So Leona took Rosa to her tiny hometown of Pine Level, Alabama, where she spent her early years.
Little Rosa McCauley enjoyed nursery rhymes, playing hide-and-seek with her little brother, and exploring the creeks and woods that surrounded her little flyspeck-size town. Rosa liked growing up in Pine Level. But when she was ten, she learned about the hidden dangers in that town.
Rosa was walking along the road when she encountered a white boy named Franklin. For no reason, he insulted her and threatened to hit her. Rosa reached down and picked up a brick.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Hit me. I dare ya.”
Franklin thought it over—then hurried away.
Rosa didn’t give the incident much thought. The next morning, she mentioned it to her grandmother. “Franklin said he’d hit me,” she said, “so I picked up a brick.”
Her grandmother was horrified. She scolded Rosa and warned her that you don’t act that way around white folks.
“But if he threatens me,” Rosa said, “I’m in my rights to defend myself!”
Her grandmother replied that Rosa was risking getting lynched.
Rosa was hurt. She felt her grandmother was taking Franklin’s side. Only much later did she understand that her grandmother scolded her out of fear—and love:
My grandmother…knew it was dangerous for me to act as if I was just the same as Franklin or anybody else who was white. In the South in those days, black people could get beaten or killed for having that attitude.
I didn’t have too many other run-ins with white children. Mostly, white children kept to themselves and black children kept to themselves. We went to different schools and different churches and came into contact with each other only once in a while.
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There were many unwritten rules that African-Americans were expected to observe in those Jim Crow days. Black men, for example, were expected to address whites as “Mister” or “Miss.” Rosa’s grandfather enjoyed flouting the rules of segregationist etiquette, and he would joke about whites behind their backs. It was her grandfather’s way of practicing civil disobedience, and Rosa learned by observing how he related to whites.
But Rosa’s grandfather knew better than to push his luck too far. The Ku Klux Klan was resurgent, lynchings were on the rise, and the Klan would sometimes parade up and down the street in front of Rosa’s house. Rosa’s grandfather was determined to protect his family. “By the time I was six,” Rosa remembered, “I was old enough to realize that we were not actually free. The Ku Klux Klan was riding through the black community, burning churches, beating up people, killing people.”
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When the threat from the Klan was high and some of their neighbors were facing attacks, Rosa’s grandfather would stay up through the night with a double-barreled shotgun close by, loaded and ready. “I don’t know how long I would last if they came breaking in here,” he told her, “but I’m getting the first one who comes through the door.” Rosa and other family members went to bed fully clothed, ready to flee if trouble came—though Rosa confessed that if anything happened, she wanted to see it. “I wanted to see him shoot that gun,” she said.
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Rosa recalled that her grandfather never seemed to be afraid—and he taught her not to live in fear. “He never looked for trouble,” she said, “but he believed in defending his home.”
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Like her grandfather, Rosa Parks never went looking for trouble—but she believed in defending her rights. Her grandfather’s boldness and courage clearly influenced Rosa’s own leadership style.
The Bible was another source of courage and comfort for Rosa during those threatening times. Her favorite passages were Psalms 23 and 27—psalms of boldness and courage. Psalm 23 promises, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (verse 4
NIV
). And Psalm 27 says, “The L
ORD
is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The
LORD
is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked advance against me to devour me, it is my enemies and my foes who will stumble and fall” (verses 1–2
NIV
).
Rosa McCauley Parks didn’t give in to hate. She refused to condemn the entire white race, even though the rules of segregated society made race hatred seem pervasive. Some whites didn’t seem to be a part of Jim Crow society. Rosa recalled the kindness of one white woman in town who would take her fishing and give her crawfish tails to bait her hook so she could catch bass. The woman treated Rosa and her family as if race simply wasn’t an issue. Rosa also remembered a white soldier who came through town after World War I. He patted Rosa on the head and said, “What a cute little girl you are.” That evening, her family marveled that the soldier had not treated Rosa like a little
black
girl, but simply like a little girl.
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Rosa didn’t even hate the white people who sometimes called her names and hurled rocks at her as she was walking to school. She felt God’s comfort in the presence of her enemies. She actually felt sorry for them. Her childhood was preparing her for the leadership challenge ahead.
Rosa attended a one-room segregated school from first through sixth grade. Public education wasn’t offered to black schoolchildren beyond the sixth grade, but Rosa’s mother sacrificed to send eleven-year-old Rosa to Miss White’s Montgomery Industrial School for Girls. It was a school for African-American girls taught by white teachers. After one semester, Rosa was awarded a scholarship in exchange for chores such as sweeping and cleaning classrooms. In addition to academic courses and Christian education, Miss White’s school taught Rosa skills in sewing, cooking, office work, and caring for the sick. Rosa would later credit the school with instilling in her a sense of pride and self-respect.
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In 1932, nineteen-year-old Rosa McCauley married Raymond Parks, who was active in the NAACP. In 1941, she got a job at Maxwell Field, an Army Air Corps base, and experienced what it was like to live in a fully integrated environment. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had banned segregation on military bases, and Rosa enjoyed riding around the base on a fully integrated trolley. But when she left the base, she rode home on a segregated bus. She wanted to do something to fight segregation, though she wasn’t sure what she could do.
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In 1943, she joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, becoming a youth leader and serving as secretary to the chapter president for fourteen years. That same year she had a troubling experience on a Montgomery municipal bus.
On a rainy day in November 1943, Rosa Parks boarded a crowded bus. The driver was—remember this name—James F. Blake. After she paid her fare, Blake ordered her to exit the bus and reboard by the rear door (“colored” people were not allowed to walk down the center aisle). She replied that she was already aboard, and she didn’t need to get off and get on again.
Blake warned that if she didn’t do as he said, he would put her off the bus. For emphasis, he grabbed her coat sleeve and tugged her toward the exit. She warned Blake not to strike her—she would go of her own accord. Blake repeated, “Get off my bus!”
Mrs. Parks got off the bus and walked toward the rear door—but the bus pulled away, leaving her at the curb to walk home in the rain.
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For a dozen years, Mrs. Parks carefully avoided riding any bus driven by James F. Blake.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks finished her work at the Montgomery Fair department store and boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus. Only after boarding did she realize that the bus driver was James F. Blake, the driver who had put her off the bus twelve years earlier.
Mrs. Parks took her seat with three other African-Americans in the fifth row—the first row of the “coloreds” section of the bus. After a few stops, the first four rows—the “whites” section—filled up with white passengers. One white man was still left without a seat.
According to the segregation laws, blacks and whites could not sit in the same row. In order to accommodate
one
white passenger,
all four
blacks in the fifth row had to get up and move to the back of the bus. Three black passengers got up. Mrs. Parks did not.
Blake approached her and said, “Are you going to stand up?”
“No, I am not,” she replied.
“I’m going to have to call the police.”
“Go ahead.”
A few minutes later, two police officers boarded the bus. Blake pointed to Mrs. Parks and said, “She won’t stand up.”
As the police officers approached, Mrs. Parks said, “Why do you push us around?”
“I don’t know,” one officer said, “but the law is the law, and you are under arrest.”
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A myth has grown up around Rosa Parks, suggesting that she remained seated simply because she was physically too tired to stand after working all day. She responds, “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day…. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
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News of Rosa Parks’s arrest spread quickly among her friends in the civil rights movement. One of her friends, union organizer Edgar Nixon, bailed her out of jail.
The following night, Montgomery’s black community leaders met in the basement of the white-trimmed, redbrick Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The pastor of that church was twenty-six-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. The community leaders quickly devised an action plan to use Mrs. Parks’s arrest as leverage to desegregate Montgomery’s city buses. The meeting was held on a Friday night, and Rosa Parks was scheduled to appear in court on Monday—so they needed to act quickly. With amazing speed and efficiency, they mobilized the entire African-American community of Montgomery to action.
Jo Ann Robinson, a leader in Montgomery’s Women’s Political Council, mimeographed more than fifty thousand leaflets calling for a one-day boycott of city buses on Monday, December 5, the day of Mrs. Parks’s court appearance. Teams of volunteers fanned out into Montgomery’s black community, distributing the leaflets. Montgomery’s broadcast media and weekend newspapers carried stories about the planned boycott, further publicizing the event. Dr. King and other black ministers spread the word to their congregations on Sunday.
The results were astonishing. On the day of the boycott, African-American ridership on the buses fell by 90 percent. Mostly empty buses rolled around the streets, costing the city money. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. saw the hand of God in the effectiveness of the boycott. “A miracle had taken place,” he said later. “The once dormant and quiescent Negro community was now fully awake.”
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At her trial that day, Mrs. Parks answered charges of disorderly conduct and violating the city’s segregation law. The trial lasted half an hour, and she was found guilty. The fine was ten dollars plus four dollars in court costs.
Dr. King and other leaders realized they had reached a critical moment. Should they continue the boycott? Clearly there was momentum for change. If they didn’t seize that moment, an opportunity like this might never come again. The leaders formed a group called the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and elected Dr. King as their leader. They called a community-wide meeting at Montgomery’s historic Holt Street Baptist Church.
Five thousand people crowded into the sanctuary to hear Dr. King speak. “There comes a time,” he said, “when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.” They took a vote of everyone present at the Holt Street meeting. The decision was unanimous: continue the boycott.
Nearly all of Montgomery’s black bus riders participated. Many began walking miles to work. Activists organized a carpool of more than two hundred cars to get people to and from work. Community activists held fundraisers to cover fuel and car repairs for the carpool vehicles. White employers threatened many African-Americans with firing—but like Rosa Parks herself, they refused to be intimidated.
The boycott lasted 381 days, ending on December 20, 1956, when the Supreme Court ordered the Montgomery buses desegregated. After the ruling, Dr. King and the MIA knew that many whites in Montgomery would resent the new rules of desegregation, so they issued suggested guidelines for the African-American community to follow:
In all things observe ordinary rules of courtesy and good behavior.
Remember that this is not a victory for Negroes alone, but for all Montgomery and the South. Do not boast! Do not brag!
Be quiet but friendly; proud, but not arrogant; joyous, but not boisterous.
Be loving enough to absorb evil and understanding enough to turn an enemy into a friend.
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Rosa Parks demonstrated bold, courageous leadership the day she refused to give up her seat on the bus. There was nothing “accidental” about her decision. Leadership is never accidental. Her bold, deliberate action led to the Montgomery bus boycott, which launched the civil rights movement and elevated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to prominence.
Mrs. Parks didn’t know that her refusal to stand would spark such a chain of events. She only knew that she was tired of giving in, and she had to do something. So she boldly defied an unjust law, and she boldly dared them to arrest her.
By acting boldly, deliberately, and decisively, Rosa Parks altered the flow of history.