Contradance weekend - I nearly wore a skirt ...

[SkirtDude]

deleted

[AMM]

... I have often gotten strength in my own struggles by reading [Martin Luther King Jr.'s] Letter From Birmingham Jail:

For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" ... This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never."

As your quote shows, King was a great orator, but he was also a careful tactician.

I recall hearing a radio program about the bus boycott (Montgomery, AL?), which the name Rosa Parks is associated with. This boycott is sometimes presented as if it had been a bold, spontaneous response to a single incident, but, as with most successful "actions," it was the fruit of years of deliberations and months of preparation. In particular, there were a number of incidents which King and his fellow civil rights activists considered using as the occasion for launching the boycott, but they waited until one happened that involved someone that did not have any negative "baggage" that their opponents could use against them. Nor was Rosa Parks unaware of the plans for a boycott when she refused to move.

[Peter v]

To JRMILLER, I'm a techie too, with a background coming out of a fine metal schooling and having worked for a medium to fine to high tech product manufacturer.

Peter v.

[Since1982]

As your quote shows, King was a great orator, but he was also a careful tactician.

I recall hearing a radio program about the bus boycott (Montgomery, AL?), which the name Rosa Parks is associated with. This boycott is sometimes presented as if it had been a bold, spontaneous response to a single incident, but, as with most successful "actions," it was the fruit of years of deliberations and months of preparation. In particular, there were a number of incidents which King and his fellow civil rights activists considered using as the occasion for launching the boycott, but they waited until one happened that involved someone that did not have any negative "baggage" that their opponents could use against them. Nor was Rosa Parks unaware of the plans for a boycott when she refused to move.

Where did you get all this Rosa Parks information? I'm 66 and lived through all of this happening and was aware each day of what led up to what, and I, until your post, was unaware that she had any coaching or involvement in ANY movements of Dr. King or anyone else other than the 2 other blacks that were in the bus that day and suggested she refuse to move to the back of the bus. After all, she was only one aisle forward of the "black section", which was filled with riders, and was why she sat in the "white" section in the first place. To sit in the back of the bus that day, Rosa would have either had to sit on the floor or get off the bus, and she, righteously so, refused. The whites in power in those days saw absolutely nothing wrong or untoward about blacks sitting on the floor if they wanted a ride.

When I took busses in the 40's and 50's it was common for the black section in the back of the bus to be full and have several blacks sitting on the floor and paying for the "privelege"? As long as they sat on the floor and didn't try to sit in a seat in front of the black section, there was no complaints from the white riders.

I've been on busses that were only a third full of whites and the black section was full, and they STILL weren't allowed to sit even with all the white section empty seats. Bad times those, for equality.

[AMM]

Where did you get all this Rosa Parks information? ... I, until your post, was unaware that she had any coaching or involvement in ANY movements of Dr. King or anyone else other than the 2 other blacks that were in the bus that day and suggested she refuse to move to the back of the bus...

This was an NPR series that was aired a year or so ago.

I didn't say that Rosa Parks was coached, I wouldn't know either way. But she, like almost every other black person in the area, was aware that something was going to happen, and if I recall correctly, even the nature of what was going to happen.

It could have hardly been otherwise: such a large-scale, long-term action could not have been carried out without extensive discussions involving everyone in the community and the assurance that the black community was united in their support for their plans. This was going on long before Rosa Parks refused to move.

[Charlie]

Hmmm. We seem to have developed a bifurcated thread with both legs being relevant. Sorry, just my own strange way of thinking

Charlie

[SkirtDude]

deleted

[Since1982]

The Montgomery Bus Boycott officially started on December 1, 1955. That was the day when the blacks of Montgomery, Alabama, decided that they would boycott the city buses until they could sit anywhere they wanted, instead of being relegated to the back when a white boarded. It was not, however, the day that the movement to desegregate the buses started. Perhaps the movement started on the day in 1943 when a black seamstress named Rosa Parks paid her bus fare and then watched the bus drive off as she tried to re-enter through the rear door, as the driver had told her to do. Perhaps the movement started on the day in 1949 when a black professor Jo Ann Robinson absentmindedly sat at the front of a nearly empty bus, then ran off in tears when the bus driver screamed at her for doing so. Perhaps the movement started on the day in the early 1950s when a black pastor named Vernon Johns tried to get other blacks to leave a bus in protest after he was forced to give up his seat to a white man, only to have them tell him, "You ought to knowed better." [2] The story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott is often told as a simple, happy tale of the "little people" triumphing over the seemingly insurmountable forces of evil. The truth is a little less romantic and a little more complex.

Pretty much what I said, Rosa Parks and what happened to her 12 years earlier may have had a lot to do with the bus boycott but the bus boycott had absolutely nothing to do with what Rosa Parks actually DID, unless she was a visionary that could see into the future.

Personally, in my youth, I saw many far worse things happen to black, American Indian, Hispanic, Asian, and other so called "Non whites" people in the USA for the stupid simpleton reason that they just happened to not be "white". I was raised in a time when every water fountain was 3 fountains, 1 for whites, 1 for "coloreds" and one for white children. Every bathroom was similar, White and coloreds. Negroes weren't actually called "blacks" until the middle 60's. There were hundreds of different kinds of businesses that had signs on the outside that said "Whites Only" and it was very rigidly enforced. Mostly by "So called" Christians. These people, even though they used "colored" for signs, never ever said "colored" TO a black person. They ONLY used the N word, and blacks accepted it as if it was their assigned lot in life. THANK THE POWERS THAT BE THAT THIS MENTALITY IS PRETTY MUCH PASSE'.