Rex Nettleford, Contributor
Rosa Parks, who became known as the mother of the American civil rights movement, is remembered for her act of literally sitting down in order to stand up for her own and the right of other black persons to ride without being driven off public transportation in racist Alabama during the turbulent '60s. - CONTRIBUTED
WHEN CERTAIN mortals die, why should they be allowed to rest in peace if their spirits need to roam the earth as long as is necessary for the benefit of all of humankind? The good they will have done while alive can never be allowed to lie interred with their bones.
Such, indeed, is the imperative of heritage, legacies and ancestral pedigree. Jamaicans clearly understand this if their choice as National Heroes of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Paul Bogle, Sam 'Diddy' Sharpe, George William Gordon, William Alexander Bustamante and Norman Washington Manley is to be taken seriously.
Fifty years ago a humble African-American (or Negro as it then was), a humble African-American seamstress refused to vacate her middle-section seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in deference to a white man, as was the requirement by the law and custom of Jim Crow America.
Her name, as the world now knows, was Rosa Parks. She died at age 92 and was recently buried in her adopted city of Detroit. But not before 'lying in honour' in the Rotunda of the capital as the first woman and the second African-American to be so celebrated. In death, Rosa Parks challenged the entire United States to sanity as she did 50 years ago in life.
In that same year, 1955, a group of 25 young undergraduates of the then University College of the West Indies (UCWI) embarked on a six-week goodwill tour of the eastern littoral of the United States, travelling by chartered bus from Miami to New York and back to Miami.
UNFORGETTABLE EXPERIENCE
It was an unforgettable experience for all who were on that tour since it added immensely to their university education. It no doubt gave them a better appreciation, not only of the travails of southern black Americans at the time, but also of the difference between the United States and the Caribbean countries from which they came, free of strange fruit (the symbol of lynching) and reminding them of what it was to be like, not having to live in legalised segregation despite the persistence of the obscenity of nuanced class-colour discrimination evident throughout the region at the time and since.
The UCWI group came upon the Jim Crowism which relegated them not to the back of the bus since the mode of travel was by charter. But it was clear that a bunch of coloured folks who comprised the group would not be welcomed in gas station restrooms or in restaurants. All those undergraduates would appreciate the action by Rosa Parks which actually took place on December 1, 1955, four months after the UCWI undergraduates left for the United States.
She refused to vacate her seat not simply because she was too tired after a hard day's work. She refused to vacate on principle and in defiance because she was sick and tired of the ongoing indignity her people had to suffer at the hands of white fellow citizens who bought into the notion that one mattered, not because of a human being's right to basic respect and dignity but because of the colour of one's skin.
That now historic act of refusal not only was a reflection of the general mood of negroes residing in Montgomery and throughout the Southern United States.
It was also the take-off point for the charismatic civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who carried the torch and led the freedom fighters along the path that brought the United States nearer to the destination of decency.
This is evident in the memorialisation of Ms. Parks in death, as Martin Luther King Jr. himself has been memorialised following his untimely passing through assassination in the 1960s. It was Rosa Parks who sat so that King and others could stand up for their rights, as Jesse Jackson characteristically intoned.
PASSING AN INSPIRATION
Rosa Parks has done another welcome thing. Her passing has clearly inspired two of the most eminent beneficiaries of her action of 50 years ago publicly to testify to the reality of the country they have served and are serving in the corridors of power.
I refer to the former Secretary of State and the present one - Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, respectively. Dr. Rice, who has given many of her black compatriots much unease owing to a perceivedideological position held in the George Bush right wing administration, publicly acknowledged her debt to Rosa Parks, whom she gives credit for making her landing up where she now is in her illustrious career. She has been visiting her home-state since Hurricane Katrina, and identifying with her roots, which will no doubt please even some of her detractors.
REMARKABLE CHANGES
Colin Powell, who happens to be of Jamaican descent, spoke frankly about his own experience of Jim Crow discrimination on his way from Brooklyn to Fort Bragg. He himself acknowledged the debt owed to Ms. Parks and the civil rights movement. For he had witnessed remarkable changes since the 1960s in race relations, liberating his children and grandchildren from the viler consequences of segregation.
It was a voice that sounded different to the one he carried some many weeks ago, virtually insisting to a U.S. talk show host that the federal delay at addressing the woes of 'Katrina' victims in New Orleans had to do with economics and not race.
The truth is that people like Rice and Powell who have enjoyed upward mobility in a system which is still marred by racist repugnancies have to be always conscious of the complex relationship between something like poverty and racism, and speak intelligently to the highly nuanced phenomenon, or not at all.
Between 'Katrina' and Rosa Parks, the United States and the entire world have been forced over the past months to some serious reflection on issues that too many (including many of us Jamaicans) would like to pretend do not exist. Happily, the harsh realities of history and contemporary life never allow one the amnesia so many of us like to indulge in.
And I, for one, was happy to hear from a visiting United States citizen how impressed he has been by the knowledge of, and empathy shown by many Jamaicans for the Rosa Parks story.
We certainly have something for which to thank Rosa Parks. Someone like her cannot be allowed to rest in peace, not as long as the indecency of dehumanisation continues to plague humanity. May her spirit never die!
