<p>She was 92.</p>
<p>Where is the bus? I read recently that it was purchased for restoration?? I thought is was the Henry Ford Museum…did they ever get that project done?</p>
<p>A sad day for our country. She was a pioneer in the civil rights movement. She will be missed.</p>
<p>
I read somewhere that there were several buses from the Montgomery bus system that have been sold as the original bus. I once saw one trying to be sold on EBay.</p>
<p>A great example of standing (sitting) firmly for what is right. Looking at counter-protests during the civil rights movements is chilling, e.g., signs saying things like “Race Mixing = Communism.” And the number of people that used the Bible to justify racism. Of course, they’re still with us today, just fighting other issues. </p>
<p>I look around at the number of multi-racial relationships that I see today and it’s a good litmus test of progress.</p>
<p>
<a href=“http://www.grandtimes.com/rosa.html[/url]”>http://www.grandtimes.com/rosa.html</a></p>
<p>Now she belongs to the ages.</p>
<p>My understanding is that the orginal bus has been lost to history. The bus that sits either at the Ford Museum or the Museum of Civil Rights in Birmingham is a different vehicle but the same Birmingham bus model from that era.</p>
<p>Also, not to diminish her efforts, but Ms. Parks act was part of an ongoing strategy by Aaron Henry and other Birmingham black leaders. In fact, Mr. Henry and NAACP leadership had earlier selected a few female members to try to get arrested for refusing to go to the back of the bus. Alas, the bus drivers declined to press the issue or the bus simply had plenty of empty seats. Finally, to paraphrase Andrew Young in another context, they “found a fool”, i.e. the particular bus driver whom Rosa Parks encountered that fateful day.</p>
<p>What an inspirational human being and what a loss for our country.</p>
<p>She had guts and a code of ethics! My hero.</p>
<p>What a classy lady she was! Her quiet and dignified image served to perfectly illustrate the necessity for basic human rights for ALL Americans under the constituion. It shamed America before the world and legitimized the Civil Rights Movement to a level it had never before enjoyed. I often think about the man for whom she’d refused to yield her seat. Has anyone ever published HIS name? I think it would be pretty hard to own up to being that man—LOL! Can you imagine being one of his grandchildren,and claiming, “My Grandad was the un-named white man who tried to get Rosa Parks to give up her seat on the bus.”</p>
<p>Such a “straight to the point” title</p>
<p>not “Rosa Parks has passed away” or maybe "Rosa Parks dies at age 92)</p>
<p>The title sent chills down my spine…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think it is hard to over-estimate the impact that Thurgood Marshall had on American politics. His groundbreaking strategy of using the court system to effect social change was not only key to the civil rights movement, but fundamentally changed the nature of our government. It is a mechanism that both parties now use: for example, conservative groups now use exactly the same strategy in their anti-affirmative action lawsuits. The plaintiffs in the recent Michigan cases were carefully selected from a pool recruited through advertising.</p>
<p>I just finished a very interesting new book by my daughter’s Poli Sci professor, Richard Valelley’s “The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement”. She was reading it over break so we passed it back and forth.</p>
<p>He details a unique circumstance in world history: blacks getting the vote immediately following the Civil War, then being entirely disenfranchised by the late 1800s, then regaining the vote again during the Civil Rights movement.</p>
<p>He focuses on two key issues:</p>
<p>Party Coalition Building: in the post-Civil War period, the Republicans needed the black vote to maintain a majority, but then as heavily Republican western states joined the union, no longer needed it so turned their backs on black voting rights. During the civil rights era, the tables had turned, and the Democrats needed the black vote.</p>
<p>Supreme Court: when blacks were literally beaten out of the right to vote in the late 1800s, the Court refused to intervene and enforce the 15th amendment. During the second “reconstruction”, Marshall’s NAACP strategy worked because the Court was willing to be proactive in forcing change.</p>
<p>My daughter and I both noted an interesting parallel to current affairs. In the post Civil War period, the federal government disenfranchised much of the white electorate in the South by excluding anyone who fought for the Confederacy. This is what led to huge numbers of elected black officials across the south. The parallel is to the attempt in the Iraq to disenfranchise ex-Bathists.</p>
<p>The problem was that disenfranchising white voters in the South was a stupid, untenable policy which predictably led to violent suppression of the black vote when the loyalty tests were ultimately removed and the federal government walked away leaving the newly enfranchised black voters twisting in the wind. The white resentment of a heavy-handed Reconstruction effort lasted 100 years and is still an undercurrent in American politics.</p>
<p>The other interesting note is that by making it impossible for blacks to vote, white Southern politicians gained undue power in national politics. Congressional and electoral college apportionment was based on total population, but since blacks couldn’t actually vote, all of those seats were controlled by half the electorate in the South. In effect, each white voter in the south had 2 for 1 power in electing congress and in the electoral college. That is why Southern congressmen and Senators served for life and why men like Richard Russell, LBJ, and others became so powerful, especially in their ability to bring home the pork.</p>
<p>Interestedad, I would recommend to you a great book entitled “Simple Justice,” but judging by the keen perspective of your comments, you’ve probably read it already. Yes, Thurgood Marshall’s legal strategy was compelling and in most cases, overwhelming. So much so, infact, that a few government officials in some southern states adamantly complained to segregationist legislators that their Jim Crow laws could not be defended n court. Particulary, Attorney General Mills Godwin of Virginia on ocassion refused to defend the state against Marshall’s litigation. Godwin later became governor. Despite that fact, Virginia was the epicenter of “Massive Resistance” to Brown vs. Board of Education, etc.</p>
<p>As for Reconstruction, it was one of the most fascinating eras in American history. Not all southern whites were disenfranchised by the “Radical Republican” congress, and remember many whites of the south never supported succesion. Kentucky and North Carolina were among the first states to return to the Union, BEFORE the official end of the war. Yes, confederates had their voting rights eliminated, but in several southern communities all a former rebel had to do was to take a completely ineffectual loyalty oath to the union to regain full citizenship.</p>
<p>I agree that total dischenfranchisement might have been a error, but I have little sympathy for the un-reconstruced confederates because they set out to destroy the magnificent progress made by the integrated state legislatures of the south from day one. Reconstruction governments did things like create public schools, which were largely unknown in the south prior to that time. There were real interracial coalitions based on the welfare of the community. But the confederates soon returned to power after the Radical Republicans lost interest in Reconstruction. Like you, I see similarities between southern Reconstruction and the “remaking” of Iraq.</p>
<p>The Henry Ford claims it does indeed have the original bus.</p>
<p>Check out <a href=“http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/rosaparks/faqactual.asp[/url]”>www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/rosaparks/faqactual.asp</a>.</p>
<p>To me, the lesson of Reconstruction is that there are never simple cut and dried solutions.</p>
<p>The degree to which freed slaves became engaged in the political process was remarkable. Valelly presents some stunning voting percentages and details the rapid building of real community-based political institutions. I can only imagine that if this enfranchisement had been allowed to continue we would have ended up in a much more positive place 100 years later.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it is certainly easy to appreciate the fear and resentment of the white electorate across the south. (Heck, we still see vestiges of it today). It must be a frightening experience to see your entire world being yanked out from under you. It’s a bit like a cornered animal – not much to lose at that point, might as well lash out (whether lashing out means KKK lynchings in the South or car-bombs in Baghdad). </p>
<p>I’m not sure there was a win-win solution during Reconstruction. Unfortunately, a steadier, more measured, long-term approach would have required the commitment of a strong federal government. Neither the political will nor the resources for that existed in the United States at the time. A hundred years later, the concept and reality of a strong federal government was in place and set the stage for the second reconstruction with the passage and enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.</p>