John Conyers On Rosa Parks - ’She Earned the Title as Mother of the Civil Rights Movement’

We speak with Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), who
worked with Parks for over a decade. Conyers remembers
Parks’ life and speaks about the possibility of a state
funeral and a national ’Rosa Parks day.’

Rep. John Conyers, (D-Michigan)

AMY GOODMAN: Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks has died
at the age of 92. It was 50 years ago this December
that she refused to give up her seat to a white man
aboard a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was
arrested and convicted of violating the state’s
segregation laws. Her act of resistance led to a 13-
month boycott of the Montgomery bus system that would
spark the modern-day Civil Rights Movement. Rosa Parks
later lived in Detroit for more than half her life.
Earlier this morning, we reached Congress Member John
Conyers in Detroit. He worked with Rosa Parks for more
than a decade. I asked him to talk about Rosa Parks’s
life.

JOHN CONYERS: Sure, I can tell you about Rosa Parks. I
began meeting her many years ago in the Civil Rights
Movement. And I had met her before she came to Detroit,
because I was invited down South to different places
with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. And
I was happy to be in her company. I had no idea at the
time that she would end up in Detroit. It so happened
that there was some family here, and when she couldn’t
get a job — she was a pariah in Alabama, Montgomery.
She couldn’t find work, so she decided to relocate. And
she and her husband, Raymond, decided to come to
Detroit.

And so, it so happened that she was also coming to my
campaign meetings, as I was a candidate for Congress at
that time. And to our great delight, she was very
quiet, but she would come and she would help us. And I
said that when I won this seat, the first thing I would
do is offer her a position on my staff, if she would
accept. And to my honor and delight, she did accept.
And we were happy to have her in my original staff.

AMY GOODMAN: What are the adjectives you would use to
describe Rosa Parks?

JOHN CONYERS: She was a humble person. That’s the first
term, I think, that would come to mind. Also, that she
was very resolute. She happened to be a religious
person, as well, and she took her Bible and the
teachings quite seriously. But she also believed in
Constitutional government, and she believed that a
civil rights movement was going to be necessary. And I
think that that combination of considerations led her
to one day, coming home from work, decide that she
would not obey the segregation laws of Alabama and
would face arrest, incarceration, trial, imprisonment
as a result of it. And she had deep religious
convictions, but she also believed very strongly that
the Constitutional requirement of equality and freedom
was something that had to be initiated and continued.

And she earned her title as Mother of the Civil Rights
Movement. There wasn’t any question about that, because
out of the bus boycott came this young new minister
from Boston named Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., 26
years old. And that really not only sparked the 380-day
bus boycott that then led to a federal suit that struck
down desegregation, not only in the buses, but it was
interpreted to extend to all forms of desegregation, of
which there was plenty. And it wasn’t all in the South.
There was desegregation in the North, as well.

So it was out of that turbulence and it was — it was a
very violent era. I had just returned from Birmingham,
Alabama, and I was taken by the school in which
Reverend Shuttlesworth was beaten. He was protesting
segregation and he was severely beaten. He had to go to
the hospital. Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who
incidentally is one of the few last original members of
the Dr. King organization with Ralph Abernathy and
Andrew Young that came together to put the new Civil
Rights Movement on the map and to really get it moving
in all the directions that it eventually took, was
right there. And you’re sort of stunned when you go by
a place in the city that’s now so relatively quiet and
say, "Good night, that’s where that incident took place."

And I can’t help but marvel at the fact that Rosa Parks
essentially had a saint-like quality. And I use that
term advisedly, because she never raised her voice. She
was not an emotional person in terms of expressing
anger or rage or vindictiveness. But she was resolute.
And this was an unusual set of circumstances for a
person who, as the Movement went on and the successes
built up, she became more and more recognized as the
person who had, without probably intending to initiate
it, a resurrection of the Civil Rights Movement.

And it seems to me that her passing is probably the end
of an era, because Rosa Parks for so long was
celebrated in many instances all over the world. She
was constantly traveling, receiving awards. She
received the Congressional Medal of Honor. She was
honored in Washington. And, as a matter of fact, one of
my responsibilities this week is to meet with our
federal officials, both in the Executive Branch and in
the Congress, to determine what is befitting national
response to the life and legacy of someone who dared to
struggle to give her life to chart an unknown path
which eventually made America much stronger, brought
about the civil rights laws that were so desperately
needed and gave many of us hope that through a people’s
power, we would be able to make this Constitutional
mandate of equality and justice something that was real
and tangible in a country whose original coming
together had agreed that the vile institution of
enslavement would continue, even as we formed a new
independent democratic nation.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Congress Member John
Conyers, who worked with Rosa Parks for more than a
decade. We’re speaking to him in Detroit, where Rosa
Parks lived more than half of her life. Congress Member
Conyers, would there be a state funeral for Rosa Parks?

JOHN CONYERS: I think that’s one of the options that
are on the table. We’ll be meeting to consider how this
should be done, and that’s an important consideration.
There are a number of things that we can do, and I want
to make sure that her home-going is properly observed,
not just in the cities in which she lived, but by our
national government, indeed, because she was certainly
a national citizen. She was a citizen of her country,
who held up her beliefs and fought for them in a way
that reflected great courage on everyone that joined
her.

AMY GOODMAN: What else could the government do? What
are you considering?

JOHN CONYERS: We’re looking at a wide number of
options. There could always be erected a statue in her
behalf. There could be naming of federal installations
or buildings after her. There has already started,
before her passing, some that wanted a day in her
honor, a holiday for her. Those are among the other
things that might be considered.

AMY GOODMAN: A national holiday?

JOHN CONYERS: Yes, ma’am.

AMY GOODMAN: Like Martin Luther King Day, Rosa Parks
day?

JOHN CONYERS: Yes, there are people that I’m sure have
started it already, because I was approached about that
a while back.

AMY GOODMAN: Congress Member Conyers, it’s often said
Rosa Parks was simply a tired seamstress who sat down.
But the fact is she was a longtime activist. It’s a
story that she tells. Do you think it’s significant
that that story be told?

JOHN CONYERS: Yes, it’s true that she had been one of
the active leaders in the struggle against segregation.
And, of course, she was well known and well respected.
But the fact was that she had not planned this, and
that it was because of her activity and her belief
system, to me, that something may have told her on that
day at that moment on that bus that she was going to do
what she did.

AMY GOODMAN: Congress Member John Conyers, speaking to
us from Detroit, worked with Rosa Parks for more than a
decade. Rosa Parks died yesterday at her home at the
age of 92. We’ll have more on her life in the days to
come.

http://www.democracynow.org/article...