POVERTY AND GLORY: A MASS MOVEMENT FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
The Parks family’s suffering occurred against the backdrop of a growing mass movement. Indeed, as her family struggled to regain its economic and psychic footing, the movement she loved and had helped to cultivate was growing in size and stature. In the spring of 1963, the campaign by King and the SCLC against downtown segregation and white violence in Birmingham had successfully drawn action from the Kennedy administration. In May, Kennedy sent a civil rights bill to Congress. The SCLC considered Parks an honorary member and called on her periodically to aid in their work or attend their events. By 1963, the SCLC had also named an award in Parks’s honor. According to Diane McWhorter, Parks “had moved into the secure haven of ‘legend,’ her actual service as a Movement figure having been abridged by the Big Boys in the Montgomery Improvement Association.”245 Despite the regard it showed for Parks, this award didn’t actually help with her difficult financial situation or recognize her considerable political and organizing talents. (Parks herself would not be awarded the Rosa Parks Award until its tenth year in 1972.)246
Parks was also asked to come to Washington, DC, in August to be part of the March on Washington. Seventy-three-year-old A. Phillip Randolph had put out the call for the march to commemorate the one-hundred-year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the social and economic inequities that still wracked the nation. Randolph enlisted longtime organizer Bayard Rustin to help him organize this march for jobs and justice, which called for the passage of the Civil Rights Act, integration of public schools, a fair employment practices bill, and job training—and massive civil disobedience. The choice of Rustin as organizer was a controversial one. A gay socialist and pacifist, Rustin had briefly been involved in the Young Communist League in the 1930s (quitting in 1941), gone to jail in opposition to military service in World War II, and been arrested with a male lover on a “morals charge” in the 1950s. He was under scrutiny from the FBI and criticized by other civil rights leaders. Still, Randolph refused to bow to pressure to get rid of Rustin.
In order to get the National Urban League and the NAACP to join, Randolph and Rustin gave up their plans for civil disobedience. President Kennedy feared that the march would be too radical and too critical of the federal government and that his civil rights bill wouldn’t pass. He began putting pressure on the march’s organizers to cancel it, and when they refused, Kennedy began lobbying for them to soften the message and succeeded in getting the march’s themes changed to unity and racial harmony, a cry to “pass the bill,” and no civil disobedience. Many in SNCC disagreed with this shift. According to SNCC chairman John Lewis, “a protest against government neglect was being turned into a propaganda tool to show the government as just and supportive.” Not all civil rights activists accepted these compromises; Malcolm X was in DC during the march but termed it a “farce on Washington” for the concessions the leadership had made to placate the Kennedys.
The march itself now is remembered in a nostalgic glow as an inspirational and quintessentially American event, but at the time, it was dreaded and feared by many white Americans. In a Wall Street Journal poll taken in the days leading up to the march, two-thirds denounced the idea as “un-American.” Most newspapers, as well as many politicians, predicted violence, and Washington, DC, police were on highest alert. NAACP president Roy Wilkins remembered that Washington “seemed paralyzed with fear of black Americans” and the Kennedy administration “had the army preparing for the march as if it were World War II.” Even when the fears of violence proved unfounded, the Wall Street Journal remained critical: “This nation is based on representative Government not on Government run by street mobs, disciplined or otherwise.”247
Despite public disapproval, the march was glorious and peaceful. On August 28, 1963, over 250,000 people came on freedom buses, cars, and trains to participate—some estimated the crowd numbered as many as 400,000 people. A coalition of religious, civil rights, and labor groups, black and white, packed the Mall that day. Dressed formally in a white jacket, black dress, gloves, and hat, Rosa Parks sat up on the dais that August afternoon. Her niece recalled staying up the night before Parks left working on the outfit.248
As magnificent as the day was, the lack of recognition for women’s roles was readily apparent, and Parks was increasingly disillusioned by it. No women had been asked to speak. Seeing how the program had emerged, Pauli Murray had written A. Phillip Randolph criticizing the sexism. Anna Arnold Hedgeman had also objected, asserting that the march should really be called “Rosa Parks Day” since Parks had started it all.249 Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women, pressed for a more substantive inclusion of women in the program.250 Their criticisms were rebuffed as demands for inappropriate, sex-specific recognition, at odds with the spirit of the event. Plus, march organizers worried about how to pick one woman; the idea that multiple women might speak was too far-fetched to contemplate.
As a result, a memo was circulated, explaining Rustin and Randolph’s proposed resolution to the problem:
The difficulty of finding a single woman to speak without causing serious problems vis-à-vis other women and women’s groups suggest the following is the best way to utilize these women: That the Chairman would introduce these women, telling of their role in the struggle and tracing their spiritual ancestry back to Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. As each one is introduced, she would stand for applause, and after the last one has been introduced and the Chairman has called for general applause, they would sit.
This “Tribute to Women” would highlight six women—Rosa Parks, Gloria Richardson, Diane Nash, Myrlie Evers, Mrs. Herbert Lee, and Daisy Bates—who would be asked to stand up and be recognized by the crowd. No woman would give an address to the crowd.
Led by men, the main march, with Randolph at the head and King and others a few paces behind, processed down Constitution Avenue to the Lincoln Memorial; the wives of the leaders were not allowed to march with them. The five women honored (Myrlie Evers had made a previous commitment to be in Detroit) led a small side march along Independence Avenue to the Lincoln Memorial. They sat silently on the dais. Fellow activist Gloria Richardson recalled that the gendered treatment began before the event began. The NAACP had called Richardson beforehand, instructing her not to wear jeans but instead a hat, gloves, and a dress. Richardson did not appreciate the dress code requirements and scoured the Eastern Shore of Maryland till she found a jean skirt. Then, on the actual day of the march, Richardson got left behind in the march tent, and her seat in the front row was taken.251
Daisy Bates introduced the tribute to women, a 142-word introduction written by John Morsell that provided an awkwardly brief recognition of women’s roles in the struggle for civil rights. She began, “Mr. Randolph, the women of this country pledge to you, Mr. Randolph, to Martin Luther King, to Roy Wilkins, and all of you fighting for civil liberties, that we will join hands with you, as women of this country.”252
Randolph himself seemed flummoxed during this portion of the program, at one point forgetting which women were actually being recognized.
“Uh, who else? Will the . . .”
[Someone says, “Rosa Parks”]
Randolph continues, “Miss Rosa Parks . . . will they all stand.”253
Parks stood up and offered eight words of acknowledgment: “Hello, friends of freedom, it’s a wonderful day.” Right before King was about to speak, Richardson found herself put in a cab along with Lena Horne and sent back to the hotel. March organizers claimed that they were worried the two would get crushed. No one else was sent back to the hotel. “They did this,” Richardson believed, “because Lena Horne had had Rosa Parks by the hand and had been taking her to satellite broadcasts, saying, ‘This is who started the Civil Rights Movement, not Martin Luther King. This is the woman you need to interview.’” Richardson started helping Horne bring reporters to talk with Mrs. Parks. “We got several people to interview Rosa Parks.
The march organizers must have found that out.”254
After the rally’s completion, no women got to be part of the delegation that met with members of the Kennedy administration. Dorothy Height observed, “I’ve never seen a more immovable force. We could not get women’s participation taken seriously.”255 Mabel Williams, wife of the militant Robert Williams and herself a radical, recalled the outrage many felt that while King was being promoted as the great leader, Mrs. Parks was not getting her due. “I don’t think she was too concerned about that. But people who were concerned about history were. . . . A lot of the male chauvinism that went on, we talked about that. But she was not bitter. . . . She wasn’t fighting anyway for credit.”256
Given the iconic view of Parks, there is a tendency to believe that she was simply happy to stand on the dais that August day and did not notice the ways women were being relegated to a lesser role. But Parks did notice the way women were being marginalized, telling Bates that day how she hoped for a “better day coming.” And in her autobiography, Parks describes the March as “a great occasion, but women were not allowed to play much of a role.” Parks, according to Brinkley, “couldn’t believe that she and Septima Clark were being treated like hostesses and was downright floored that dancer Josephine Baker was not even asked to speak.”257 Coretta Scott King too highlighted how “not enough attention” was focused on women’s roles in the movement in a feature article in 1966, making clear to the reporter that “it was a woman who triggered the whole movement.” Scott King mailed an autographed copy of the piece to Parks.258
The SCLC still sought Parks’s participation in their ongoing work. But when Martin Luther King won the Nobel Prize in the 1964, though many in the SCLC journeyed to Oslo for the award, Parks did not, unable to afford the trip. Clark thought “they should have really offered Rosa Parks her transportation and everything over there, but you know, they didn’t.” King accepted the award on behalf of “those devotees of nonviolence who have moved so courageously against the ramparts of racial injustice. . . . These are the real heroes of the freedom struggle: they are the noble people for whom I accept the Nobel Peace Prize.” One of those heroes certainly was Rosa Parks.
Parks’s associates had a sense of her continuing financial difficulties. In 1965, Horton tried to put together a fund-raising campaign for a tenth-anniversary commemorative gift to Parks. He sought King’s help but King never responded.259 Similarly, in Detroit, the Women’s Political Action Committee run by Parks’s friend Louise Tappes (and of which Parks was a member) decided to throw a testimonial dinner in her behalf. A 1964 WPAC newsletter explained:
She has received many, many plaques and awards of merits, etc. from citizens all over the country, but as meritorious as they are, they do not compensate for Mrs. Parks having to move away from her home for fear of loss of life, and neither do they compensate for the great financial loss of adequate income. WPAC members felt that to honor Rosa Parks in a very material way, would in some measure, say THANKS, for spearheading our nation-wide push for freedom, out of which, has emerged the great leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.260
On April 3, 1965, along with prominent church, community, and labor leaders, Coretta Scott King and Ralph Abernathy journeyed to Detroit to honor “a woman of bold and audacious courage.”261
Arriving an hour late to the festivities, Mrs. Parks received a thunderous standing ovation from the thousand people gathered at COBO Hall.262 Coretta Scott King honored “one of the noted women of the time [who] has been classified as an agitator by the Governor,” reminding the audience that “at the time [Mrs. Parks] took the stand it was much more unpopular than now to speak out for our rights.”263 Scott King spoke of the need for assistance to aid voter registration in the “Black Belt,” condemned the aggressive actions of many Southern law-enforcement officials, and then led the crowd in singing “We Shall Overcome.”264 At its annual convention in Birmingham in 1965, the SCLC also honored Parks. Lawyer Constance Motley gave the address praising Parks as a “freedom fighter”: “Yours is the kind of courage and determination and nonviolent spirit we all need for the future.”265
But it was John Conyers who fundamentally shifted the Parks’s family’s economic situation. Parks had been a dedicated volunteer in Conyers’s long-shot campaign for Congress. Elected in November 1964, Conyers became Detroit’s second black representative to the House. In March 1965, the newly elected congressman hired Rosa Parks to work with constituents as an administrative assistant in his Detroit office. Recognizing her need, skills, and value to his own emerging political base, Conyers put an end to a decade of economic insecurity for Rosa Parks. With this position, Parks now had a salary, access to health insurance, and a pension—and the restoration of dignity that a formal paid position allowed. Political activist Mabel Williams recalled talking with Parks about “the hard, hard times” the family had encountered, and how if it had not been for John Conyers they might have perished. “John was a real hero to me and others who knew [what he did],” Williams explained.266
Conyers, who became the sixth black congressman in the House at that time, was in a position to aid Mrs. Parks and also to benefit from her considerable personal and political skills. With her political acumen and decades of organizing experience, commitment to social justice, and ability to recognize people’s needs—as well as her volunteer work on his campaign—she could play an important role at his Detroit office. With her history working at the grassroots, she would bring her experience from the back roads of NAACP organizing in Alabama to take on the social issues facing blacks in Detroit. Emblematic of a new black political power, Conyers also recognized and was not threatened by Rosa Parks’s symbolic value in his office. Indeed, having this Southern heroine greet constituents in his office, attend community meetings, or stand beside him at public events embodied the mix of old and new black politics that Conyers was attempting to bring to the national stage. He saw her as the most important civil rights activist in the state.267 And so Mrs. Parks came to work for him.
Parks’s decade of deep economic insecurity was drawing to an end. Her own political work in Detroit, however, was on the rise. Times were changing, and Mrs. Parks was now in a better position to take on Northern racism.
CHAPTER SIX
“The Northern Promised Land That Wasn’t”
Rosa Parks and the Black Freedom Struggle in Detroit
A YEAR BEFORE MOVING TO Detroit, Parks had visited the city on the invitation of Local 600 to speak to the membership about the boycott. Since 1949, Local 600 had emerged as a site of interracial militancy and dissent in the autoworkers union, as Walter Reuther consolidated his influence as UAW president. After public hearings investigating the Michigan Communist Party in 1952, white workers raged through the plants (as they had in the 1940s when blacks were hired in larger numbers in the auto industry), engaging in sit-down strikes and “runouts” to remove black activists who had been named as Communist sympathizers.1 The UAW did nothing to stop these hate attacks. Rather, shortly afterward, Reuther purged the leadership of Local 600 and placed its leadership under an international union administrator.2
This did not obliterate the feistiness of many Local 600 members. They wanted to bring Rosa Parks to address the local, though Reuther did not.3 Reuther’s continuing distrust of the local, and the controversial nature of the boycott, may have influenced Reuther’s opposition to her visit.4 Undaunted by Reuther’s lack of support, the local raised the money to bring her themselves and warmly welcomed her visit. Parks was no stranger to militant trade unionism herself, having aided Nixon’s work with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. While visiting the local, Parks likely made an important connection to the Tappes family. Sheldon Tappes worked at the River Rouge plant and rose through the ranks of the UAW; his wife, Louise, an active NAACP member and future leader of the WPAC, would become a close friend. Members of Local 600 put Parks up at the Garfield Hotel in Detroit’s Paradise Valley, because in 1956, Detroit’s downt
own hotels were not open to black guests.5
Motown was rife with segregation. Detroit’s inner suburbs like Dearborn, Redford, Ferndale, and Warren swelled with whites fleeing black migration to the city and proudly asserted their racial exclusivity. Many of these suburban migrants condemned the city as decrepit and dangerous. And during the Montgomery bus boycott, the mayor of Dearborn, Orville Hubbard, boasted to the Montgomery Advertiser of his support of “complete segregation, one million per cent. . . . Negroes can’t get in here. . . . These people are so anti-colored, much more than you in Alabama.”6 Meanwhile, within the city limits, neighborhood associations had flowered like weeds following the black migration and racial tensions of the World War II era, as many white homeowners sought to prevent black people from moving into “their neighborhoods.”7 Though they did not post signs, many Detroit restaurants nonetheless refused black people service; the acclaimed Joe Muer’s Seafood served black customers in the back, wrapping their fish dinners in newspaper.8 Detroit hospitals separated black and white patients, with some even maintaining segregated wards,9 and the Arcadia skating rink, centrally located on Woodward Avenue, didn’t allow black skaters.10
Southerners had reacted to the double standard of being singled out for practices also happening in the North. Montgomery’s police commissioner Clyde Sellers had decried the hypocrisy of Northern outrage during the boycott: “The northern press wants to play up things going on in the South, but they don’t want to publicize segregation in their own cities.”11 And in her talk to Local 600 and in others across the North, Parks explicitly linked Northern and Southern struggles against racial injustice,12 and framed racial discrimination and segregation as a national problem, not just a Southern flaw.13
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks Page 25