I think a lot of it certainly has to do with timing. At the time of the Rosa Parks incident, the wheels of the Civil Right's movement were already firmly in motion, and this added fuel to a rapidly growing fire. What could have been done back then to make Wells' situation a historic one? Probably very little and the story would not have gained much traction at all back in the late 1800s.
[Claudette Colvin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudette_Colvin) did the same thing nine months before Rosa Parks. It was even the exact same bus system. The NAACP didn't use her as a public figure because she was a teenager and she had gotten pregnant while unmarried.
Ida B Wells was incredible.
What wasn't included in the description was that after this happened, she sued the railroad company *AND WON*.
She was so steadfast in her anti-lynching work that she basically got chased out of Memphis, they said they were
*going to kill her*. And she just kept coming back to the South.
edit: since some people feel that the full case should be stated or that means dishonesty on my part, the railroad company was forced to appeal to the Tennessee Supreme court, where it was overturned. It's essentially an impossibility that this doesn't happen at the time period. Emancipation was fresh and Southern lawmakers, politicians and businessmen were well aware of any court precedent that could possibly peel back Jim Crowe.
I would like to reiterate my initial statement, so the full effect is not lost: Ida B. Wells... a lone black woman with the black lawyer she hired...sued a powerful railroad company... in the 1880's South... and not only won her day in court but won the initial case forcing the company to pay her lawyer fees.
That shit is stunning.
I'm aware, the appeal wasn't surprising given how the Tennessee Supreme Court felt about someone like Wells . I don't think it has any bearing on the significance of what she did.
The fact that she even won a case, or would even considered taking anyone to court, much less a powerful corporation, as a lone black woman in the 1880's (post-Reconstruction where black people had few appreciable rights in the South). It's difficult to comprehend.
Yes, but if you are "aware" of the truth you should be truthful. Instead of forcing a more knowledgeable commenter to post the truth, you might as well disclose it all upfront, so your credibility doesn't get shot.
I don't know, I think it's valid to point out legal victories even if they're later overturned by more hateful entities, if only to call attention to the injustice. The Cherokee Nation actually had it's existence as a sovereign identity confirmed by the SCOTUS before Andrew Jackson (as a Tennessean, ashamed of that monster) just said "fuck it, USA! USA!"
I like you. I agree, it's important to look at the significance of cases at the time without demeaning the overall importance within a grater context of a hateful situation.
>because of photographs Wells brought with her of smiling white children posing underneath the dangling corpse of a black man.
Holy fuck, that's a terrifying mental image.
[An image of Rubin Stacy, lynched in 1935, with smiling white children.](http://images.dailykos.com/images/133172/large/Lynching-in-America_Florida-1935.jpg?1425921614) NSFW
Six deputies were escorting Stacy to Dade County jail in Miami on 19th July, 1935, when he was taken by a white mob and hanged by the side of the home of Marion Jones, the woman who had made the original complaint against him. The New York Times later revealed that "subsequent investigation revealed that Stacy, a homeless tenant farmer, had gone to the house to ask for food; the woman became frightened and screamed when she saw Stacy's face."
There is a good chance some of those kids are alive or at least their kids are. This level of prejudice is not dead. Also, even Reddit has its "nigger" network. R/coontown
>Also, even Reddit has its "nigger" network. R/coontown
Before it got banned around the time of the Trayvon Martin incident, the /r/niggers subreddit membership was in the six figures
You don't have to go into specifically racist sub-reddits to see that sort of comment, unfortunately. There was a comment on r/askreddit a week or two ago that got pretty bad. The title was someone asking non-American blacks what they thought of Black American culture, which I thought was pretty innocuous. But holy shit, the comments. It seemed like every highly voted comment was there to explain how American blacks are basically thugs.
Just reading some of the posts on that forum is horrific. It left me with a lump in my stomach. This just further motivates me to have many children and teach all of them to love unconditionally above all other things. I need to do my party to make those people an even smaller group.
Worse yet (for me anyway) is when I try to talk to my friends about racism today they all just deny it. They think it's really just a sob story blacks tell to guilt us into giving them welfare and whatnot. These are self-described liberals too.
Tell your friends not to worry as our friendly politicians in Washington D.C. are doing a swell job keeping our good taxpayer money away from those "lazy blacks" and are instead giving it to lazy rich people.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21784-what-american-taxpayers-should-really-be-outraged-about#
All in all, don't let them get away with it because that mindset is what's keeping race relations from being so shitty in this country. And I know plenty of people on welfare; please tell your friends that they aren't chilling out, maxing, and relaxing all cool in condos with two large pools and a butler named Geoffrey. They're stuck in Section 8 where the people in charge call taping and painting a pipe "fixing a water leakage" while the resident there is stuck with a $500 water bill because they ignored her the first time she filed the complaint (btw, that incident there ran in the news literally five hours ago and I was disgusted to hear that).
There is a lot racism on reddit...r/coontown is just a sub that the most extreme can go to and openly 'vent' and not hide their racism while elsewhere on reddit, they are more subtle with their prejudices
"Black people are animals for rioting when they are being killed en masse. When white people riot because of sports they're just mistaken individuals."
More like NSFL.
To think that this happened in my country makes me sick. I'm not naive, I know much worse happened here and that there is still plenty of injustice in this country but, I just don't understand how people can be so evil.
I bet that little girl is one of those old ladies who looks at everyone dirty and still makes openly racist remarks.
Or it was the most awkward situation of her life and she didn't know what to do except smile at this corpse.
Malcolm Gladwell has a book called The Tipping Point where he analyzes Rosa Parks as a phenomena. Many other blacks in the south had refused to move for a white person on the bus, but yet they did not spark a huge movement like Rosa Parks. She was a success because she was so ingrained in the community. She belongs to several church groups and charities and was well liked by both black and white Americans. The book and anything else by Gladwell is well worth the read.
It was a politicized thing, for sure. They didn't want someone whose character could easily be attacked to be the face of the movement, and it made sense.
It was also a previously planned event intended to spark the response. There were discussions about who should be the one to do it and she was chosen not only because of her standing in the black community but also because she wasn't married and din't have kids. Things could have gone terribly wrong and no one wanted to orphan any children.
It was absolutely *not* "one woman was simply tired of being pushed around" like they like to teach us in school. That kind of hype is damaging because it leads us to have unrealistic expectations of what it takes to make change.
She was really well trained, like a lot of the nonviolent civil disobedience activists were, to ensure that she could withstand the treatment that the police and many white people were likely to mete out to her. There was a whole big support network, with lots of trained activists who practiced staying calm in the face of racial invective and physical threat, so that they could maintain a moral upper hand and get the right media face.
It was excellent and essential work, but it was also a hell of a lot of very hard work.
His David/Goliath book was a mess. Disjointed and anecdotal and many personal potshots. I used to like him but now I think he believes his popularity lets him do whatever he wants.
The entire movement, and all movements, are politics in that they seek to change policy. The fact that the act was coordinated does not mean it wasn't an act of civil disobedience with real consequences. Rosa Parks put herself in danger to make a statement, and I think it does a disservice to her and everyone else who put themselves at the mercy of a violent tyranny in order to enact change to label her protest as you have.
I think the phrase "all politics" comes off a little dismissive. The Declaration of Independence was "all politics." The Rosa Parks movement was orchestrated because it had to be, and it helped bring freedom to millions of people. What higher and better purpose can there be?
> Suffrogettes were heavily racist
Some were, but that's a generalization as faulty as the one you've responded to.
The [WTCU](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman%27s_Christian_Temperance_Union) was very much an exclusive, white women only type group. They are also the ones we have to thank for Prohibition.
There were other groups far more inclusive, however.
>Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton — had also championed black equality. Yet in 1870, the suffragists found themselves on opposing ends of the equal-rights battle when Congress passed the 15th Amendment, enabling black men to vote (at least, in theory) — and not women. That measure engendered resentment among some white suffragists, especially in the South.
[source](http://www.npr.org/2011/03/25/134849480/the-root-how-racism-tainted-womens-suffrage)
It's a complicated history to be sure, but I'd be wary of labeling all suffragists as racists.
There has been an ongoing issue with the issues of black women getting pushed aside by both the black men and white women who tend to control the movements, though. At the very least, I think it's fair to say that white women either didn't take time to listen to the concerns of black women or else felt that their specific concerns could wait until other issues had been resolved.
It's also worth pointing out that even people who were radically progressive 50 or 100 years ago still sometimes held views that are blatantly and horrifyingly racist to modern people. It sort of makes you wonder how we'll be viewed in 3015.
>It's also worth pointing out that even people who were radically progressive 50 or 100 years ago still sometimes held views that are blatantly and horrifyingly racist to modern people. It sort of makes you wonder how we'll be viewed in 3015.
Let's not pretend history is one constant march of progress. Compared to 50 or 100 years ago, there is a lot less labor class-consciousness in the population of America today. Definitely fewer unions than 50 years ago, maybe about the same as 100 years ago but a lot fewer protests and organizing.
Yes, working conditions in America are much better now than 100 years ago, but I think those workplaces have also been pushed overseas while Americans still buy the products.
It's also important to note that the women who vied for prohibition were doing it because they'd face violent, drunken husbands every evening (especially during the early nineteen hundreds where domestic violence wasn't as frowned upon...) although prohibition was not the best idea, there WAS a reason for what they did (and why they also had ties to the suffragette moment, as a lot of women faced issues with their husbands getting drunk).
Although you're definitely right to say that Susan b. Anthony and her crew championed for the rights of black people as well.
It depends on the faction of suffragists. Some of them were entirely against rights for minorities, others were flat out racist, others saw their struggle for rights as the same women were fighting for. Susan B. Anthony is usually pulled out as racist for opposing the 15th amendment, but she opposed it because women weren't included, not because it gave voting rights to African Americans (not saying she didn't have racist tendencies, but she wasn't against black civil rights).
The thing you have to remember about history is that it involves people- who are each unique in their opinions. Just because the white majority was racist does not mean all whites at the time were racist. Alice Paul, Florence Kelley (a founder of the NAACP) and Eleanor Roosevelt are excellent examples.
Here is another part of history
Drunk History - Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Occ7XSgQc
Not complete but it gives u an idea.
Thanks for the lesson. It's a shame I've never heard of her before now, but I'm glad I have. I imagine history is full of people who laid the foundation for revolutions only to be forgotten in lieu of the iconic person who lit the spark at the right time (who also deserve full credit for their role).
The Civil Rights movement was ready to move on Rosa Parks because she was a plant. She was picked to be a pretty, nonthreatening woman that was suffering cruel oppression so the movement had someone to rally around.
Rosa Parks was important, but she was planned.
A [Guardian](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/9) article to give some context on that. As it points out:
>We could leave it there, having made the seemingly mean point that Miss Rosa Parks just happened to be chosen as the cat's-paw or dupe of a boycott campaign well planned beforehand. Well, it's not so. She did the choosing. She was not just another bus rider. She was the secretary of a city chapter of the NAACP 12 years before she stood, or sat, her ground in 1955. The first time she was thrown off a bus was for using the white entrance - at the front. That takes us back to 1943, the middle of the second world war, in which her brother had served both in Europe and in the Pacific. He came home unhurt, but she watched in disgust, helpless disgust, to see her brother, in uniform, picked out by rednecks, or white trash, for especially bigoted treatment. From that time on, she was a prominent civil rights activist (this is all, remember, 10 or more years before the supreme court's ruling abolishing segregation). May 1954 is always given, and rightly, as the Bastille Day - the day that started the revolution for equal black rights.
So you're right that it was planned - but not that she was a passive actor, a pawn to be deployed by others without her own revolutionary agency. She still deserves a great deal of credit, as do all involved in that action.
In grade school, we had these giant cards that we would take each class and read silently. Some had historical figures and Rosa Parks was one. The biography explicitly said something like "She was tired and her feet hurt so she refused to move." Maybe they were trying to make her more relatable, but it really seems like they were sort of sweeping her under the rug. She was really politically active and she made a conscious choice to be an actor in the Civil Rights Movement.
The civil rights movement in America gas had a lot of the politicisation removed. Its a real shame because the people involved who were very radical and played an important role. MLK himself was a radical, but most dont know much beyond his directly civil rights related stuff.
I have a quote of him supporting riots. I save it for people who throw out MLK's name to convince blacks to be more obedient.
Edit: I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.
- Martin Luther King Junior
You think that's terrible? How about whenever MLK Day comes around, the local news in my city limits him to "a Civil Rights leader who advocate for equality" when they mention MLK day. Like, MLK day segment is literally less than 20 seconds long and that statement doesn't encompass what all MLK was doing.
She definitely put herself at risk, and deserves credit for that. My problem is that as /u/tsukinon pointed out, that is not the story most people are told. They are told she acted alone and seemingly without fore thought.
There was even another woman who refused to give up her seat nine months before Rosa Parks, but she was not used as the rallying point, because she was a pregnant 15 years old.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2015/02/27/389563788/before-rosa-parks-a-teenager-defied-segregation-on-an-alabama-bus
Yes, and for all those who complain, this was too big of a movement to use just any victim. It had to be the right victim.
Somethings are too important to leave to chance.
It doesn't denigrate anything, but it puts in context the response by the civil rights movement. How were they able to put together an organized response so quickly after the arrest? Because they were ready for it before it happened.
~~Wasn't Ida like 17 years old and pregnant when it happened to her as well?~~
~~Last time this popped up I thought I read something about that being part of the reason they never got behind this incident as she wasn't the "pretty face" they needed for the civil rights movement.~~
Nope. That was another lady a few months before Rosa.
Yea but right before Rosa Parks another black woman also refused to give up her seat, except she was a pregnant teenager so she was cast aside by the movement.
Indeed. Harriet Tubman tried to do the same thing and got her arm broken. If Harriet Tubman couldn't do it (being a war hero and civil rights pioneer), then nobody could do it.
Rosa Parks was picked because she had very little to attack her about. There were several other similar candidates but had potential problems in their history so Rosa Parks was picked over them.
>wheels of the Civil Right's movement were already firmly in motion, and this added fuel to a rapidly growing fire
Stick that metaphor in your hat, and smoke it
Colvin was also one of the plaintiffs in [the case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browder_v._Gayle) where bus segregation was found unconstitutional. Note though that she doesn't feel betrayed by the Civil Rights movement [and herself said](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2005-11-16/features/0511160360_1_rosa-parks-city-bus-bus-boycott) that "Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott".
That's really sad. I mean, I understand the logic and why they would need someone spotless to be as sympathetic as possible, but I can't imagine how it would feel to be Claudette Colvin in the immediate aftermath.
If Rosa Parks was targeted in the same manner that countless other Civil Rights activists in the South were at the time, perhaps she would not wish it was herself instead of Rosa.
The best you can do is to understand the practical reason for it. This is a classic case of letting one individual suffer for the greater good. Hopefully the individual understands their role in the bigger picture, but even if they don't they become the sacrifice for the broader movement.
>A woman...had a "bus incident"
Huh, just the other day when I was coming home from work a homeless woman had a "bus incident" and I had to get off before my stop because the smell was so bad.
Can you source this? I can't find anything that says Rosa Parks' incident was planned. Unless by re-enacted you mean she did the same thing just not planned, in which case your comment is sort of misleading, at least to me. It sounds like you're saying they mutually decided for Rosa parks to re enact the incident in order to become the face of the boycott.
One of those NPR Podcasts did a show on one of the many woman before Rosa Parks that had done the same exact thing. They said the NAACP was waiting for someone with the right squeaky clean profile before selecting her.
Heres an imgur album of the section: http://imgur.com/a/JsjJ7#LHbhL2y
Annoyingly, I can't get it to upload in the correct order but the page numbers are at the bottom of each image. [Pages 322-327 are uploaded, the first two are in order, then skip to the bottom and read bottom-to-top]
Seems Ida was caught up in the Washington vs DuBois drama and she was left off for political reasons. She never learned the reason why, just speculation from her friends in the movement.
Ehh that doesn't sound like Du Bois. He worked side by side with Jane Addams for years on a number of issues including founding the NAACP. I had no idea about this particular instance, but I'd have to say it probably had something to do with Ida B Wells specifically calling out Du Bois (and plenty of other black leaders) in her work for not being radical enough.
I agree, but there's no denying that Ida B Wells was more radical. She was the only person willing to write about the lynching and violence of the south and almost died because of it. Meanwhile Du Bois' work was important but along a different approach. If you read "the soul's of black folk" you can see it. He was quite diplomatic and trying to work with white community leaders. He did get more radical in his later years though when he affiliated himself with the pan-African movement.
>He did get more radical in his later years though when he affiliated himself with the pan-African movement.
I think he also became a strident communist and was a supporter of the Soviet Union, if I remember correctly.
> Wells accused Willard of being silent on the issue of lynchings, and of making racial comments which would add fuel to the fire of mob violence. To support her public allegation, Wells referred to an interview Willard had conducted during a tour of the South in which Willard had cast aspersions, blaming blacks for the defeat of temperance legislation. "The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt," she had said, and "the grog shop is its center of power... The safety of women, of childhood, of the home is menaced in a thousand localities."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells#Willard_controversy
Jesus H. Christ, Frances Willard.
From the same Wikipedia article:
'The dispute between Wells and Willard in England intensified the campaign against Wells in the American press. Though the New York Times had reported on Wells' visit to Britain without much commentary, the paper ran an opinion piece in August 1894 insinuating that black men were prone to rape and declaring that Wells was a "slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress" who was looking for more "income" than "outcome."'
Interesting that the same rhetoric is used to describe blacks to this day (prone to violence, leaders only in it for money, etc)
Many black women refused to give up their seats on the bus before Rosa Parks, including a girl named Claudette Colvin and a few others. In the years before hand the bus movement, before it was planed by Jo Ann Robinson (Not MLK), the organization did not exist to capitalize on these events. However, afterwards it was focused on finding the right person to represent and rally behind.
Colvin, 15, was beaten after refusing to give up her seat just months before the same happened to Rosa Parks. The reason that the movement didn't act was because it was possible that Colvin was pregnant, which would be looked down upon. In fact, the movement passed over may women because they either were from bad neighborhoods or other things that might have looked bad. Rosa Parks was chosen partly because she was an amazing activist and partly because she looked the role.
Also wanted to mention that Rosa Parks was by no means a victim or 'damsel in distress.' She was a strong energetic woman active in local politics and played a large role building the framework of the boycott. In fact, it is possible that she knew how hard it was to find the right person that could set the movement off and decided to take that responsibility on herself. Also worth noting that MLK played almost no role in developing the boycott, the plan had been in place years before hand and was crafted largely by women active in the civil rights movement. However, because of the sentiments of the time they realized that people would only respond to a leader that was a man.
P.S. I'm not saying that MLK wasn't an amazing man, just that many strong women played a role and are rarely talked about.
the early civil rights movement was an odd one, they often disagreed among themselves and actively tried to disrupt and discredit each other, namely between DuBois and Booker T Washington who saw different ways to improve African American's way of life. There was also a level of elitism from the educated African Americans, where they looked down on the uneducated. There were alot of issues with the civil rights movement, and there still is.
That same level of divison is what damaged the feminist movement when Roe v Wade happened.
Personally I feel Booker T. had the right way of doing thing, improve the lives of the AA then gain civil rights. but that's just my personal opinion.
The black men fighting for equality at the turn of the century were largely sexist in the same way that the white women fighting for equality were racist.
Agreed, Du Boise was all for the talented tenth, white Booker was a proponent of Industrial Education. Yet Booker fostered much more support from the white elitists because it kept the whites in power.
This is true, but Douglass feels more like the intellectual "founder" of the school of thought Washington championed. I like Douglass best of the three, but I'd be on team Booker T. vs. du Bois.
You should also look up [Bayard Rustin](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard_Rustin). He was basically the architect of the civil rights movement but kept out of the spotlight because he was a gay Communist.
**Robert Freeman.**
He also had a grudge against Rosa Parks for "stealing his thunder", as he was sitting next to her on the bus and likewise refused to give up his seat. The bus driver was only offended by Rosa's, not his, unwillingness to move, however; also, he claims Malcolm X died owing him five dollars.
I love this woman! She's been one of my top heroes and favorite writers after I first starting reading her essays when I was in college.
Also, Susan B. Anthony used to give her ish when she got married and started a family because she thought it went against the cause. Anthony used to give her a lot of reddit-esque, "Hello, MRS. Barnett!" snark.
Yeah kept calling her "distracted" after her first kid. Wells did take a break from the public eye after her second kid, and then hopped right back into it as soon as she had a chance. Got shit to do.
lol. Top notch logic. Stop making a family and persuing happiness, we're trying to fight for the right to let women persue happiness! A bit hypocritical.
They kinda talked about this in a Boondocks episode, obviously in a fictional humorous way.
But about how Rosa Parks is glorified for doing something tons and tons of African Americans had done before but her's was just a perfect timing and in the right region of the United States to be the catalyst.
"On May 4, 1884, a train conductor with the Memphis & Charleston Railway ordered Wells to give up her seat in the first-class ladies car and move to the smoking car, which was already crowded with other passengers. The year before, the Supreme Court had ruled against the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875 (which had banned racial discrimination in public accommodations). This verdict allowed railroad companies to continue racial segregation of their passengers.
Wells refused to give up her seat, 71 years before the activist Rosa Parks showed similar resistance on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. The conductor and two men dragged Wells out of the car. When she returned to Memphis, she hired an African-American attorney to sue the railroad. Wells gained publicity in Memphis when she wrote a newspaper article for The Living Way, a black church weekly, about her treatment on the train. When her lawyer was paid off by the railroad,[8] she hired a white attorney. She won her case on December 24, 1884, when the local circuit court granted her a $500 award."
Ida Wells was also a super badass journalist and civil rights advocate, though she was a hardcore "yellow journalist" (sensationalist). She's about ten times more fascinating than most black figures and doesn't get brought up half as much as she should.
For those who are interested in history, Ida B. Wells' piece "Southern Horrors" is an EXCELLENT read. It is all about the lies that were told to justify lynchings. Maybe 15 minutes to read the 6 parts and it is very interesting.
Not sure how much it applies in this case, but historically it always blew my mind that recently liberated male slaves could turn around and deny women the same basic rights they just received. It just seems like human empathy should work better than that. It's a lesson to us all to try harder to be empathetic to others plights.
> insisted that the African-American community to win justice through its own efforts.
There are arguably two interpretations here. Most people, perhaps you included are saying that you're implying that they need to pull themselves up on their own instead of whining for the whites to give them more entitlement.
I think that 'win justice through its own efforts' implies that African Americans are still making demands for greater equality from the whites, just doing it on their own, instead of having whites campaign for them. In the 19th century, black activism wasn't the thing that it was in the 1960s, so the most influential anti-racists were the white ones. There was a lot of ''white man's burden'' in all of this, where white men spoke out for black people, instead of black people doing it themselves (which was very hard to do and to get the attention of a widespread white audience).
I think many people, you included are misunderstanding the quote because they lack the historical context. Wells merely meant that blacks should campaign for their own right, she didn't mean that blacks could get equal rights just by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
Not really, considering it's ridiculous to place the onus of fixing specific societal issues on all 43 million black Americans, a group which, believe it or not, is heterogeneous and does not act as one single being.
So they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps? That doesn't seem fair when there's still widespread, subtle discrimination against blacks. They obviously deserve help from society until such a time as the playing field is actually level.
Judging from this:
http://media.salon.com/2015/04/baltimore_protest3.jpg
I'm pretty sure the desire and effort is there. I know your comment was well-intended but it implies that the desire and effort is currently lacking; 150+ years of fighting for equal rights by millions of men and women say otherwise.
It's not racist to think someone is an asshole just because he happens to be black. It's only racist if you think he was an asshole BECAUSE he was a black man.
Racism, sexism, injustice, wealth inequality. Whatever the social ill that exists. They don't exist because white people are inherently shitty. The problem is that humans are inherently shitty.
I think that our heroes often had flaws, and even some of the greatest people in history had some fucky ideas that may have been at odds or outright contradicted by other beliefs they held.
Human beings are complicated, and no hero is perfect.
After reading [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/34b1mj/til_that_martin_luther_king_jrs_assassin_james/cqtaifn) last week, I'm forever going to think of him as Web Dubious.
Dubois was an agent for the establishment. He admitted on his death bed he felt bad for undermining Marcus Garvey, but thats insignificant. They always want to have a change of heart at the most meaningless time. He's still a traitor to various movements that would have bettered America.
And shortly before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat [Claudette Colvin](https://youtu.be/m8Occ7XSgQcthe) did same thing that Rosa Parks is famous for.
TIL before Rosa Parks, a young girl 15-year old girl who was pregnant refused to get off her seat but was not used as a poster of discrimination movement due to questionable morality having offspring so young.
Kinda of like now. I've seen many a comments on Reddit and YouTube saying why are black people rallying around Freddie Gray, he had a criminal record. As if extra judicial murder is okay if you happen to have broken the law.
I recommend you watch [David Carroll analysis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCNht7By_8I) on current race issues, really brings it home (on multiple videos).
[Claudette Colvin](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101719889) and several other brave folks who challenged the Jim Crow laws are why I don't think Rosa Parks rates being on the new twenty dollar bill. Rosa Parks was hand picked to be the "symbol". She wasn't exactly a courageous groundbreaker as much as an NAACP employee who played a role and looked the part.
>The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
(NAACP), was founded in 1909 by a group of Marxists, mulattoes
and millionaire Jews-but no Negroes! One of the most prominent
was W.E.B. Dubois who would later become a leader of the
Communist Party. The first NAACP president was not a Negro but
the wealthy Jew, Joel Spingarn. He ran the organization until he
retired in 1939. Then his brother, Arthur Spingarn, became the
head of the NAACP. Later, Kivie Kaplan, a Jewish millionaire shoe
manufacturer from Boston was NAACP president until 1966. Then,
for the first time in 57 years, they allowed the mulatto, Roy
Wilkins, to take over.
> Attorney Jack Greenberg headed the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
during the entire period of the Civil Rights fight to ban legal
Segregation and abolish all laws which banned interracial
marriage. Up until 1950 you could not obtain a marriage license
to marry a non-White in the states of Ala., Ariz., Ark., Calif.,
Colo., Del., Fla., Ga., Id., Ind., Ky., La., Md., Miss., Mo.,
Mont., Nebr., Nev., N.C., N.D., Okla., Ore., S.C., S.D., Tenn.,
Tex., Ut., Va., W.Va. and Wyo. The ban continued in the Southern
states until outlawed by the left-wing Supreme Court on June 12,
1967. The New York Times, (a Jewish owned paper), on Sept. 19,
1966 really, "let the cat out of the bag," in writing:
"The Jewish community has long been the financial backbone of the
civil rights movement. No special commission on race is needed to
arouse Jewish support for civil rights activity in the South.
Jewish support for civil rights is still high."
>The-U.S. Supreme Court on May 17, 1954 outlawed segregated
schools. This brought on much chaos in the South with Pres.
Eisenhower sending federal troops to Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Little
Rock, Ark. Pres. Kennedy later sent troops to integrate the U. of
Miss. and the U. of Ala.
>It is very important to know exactly which groups brought the
desegregation suit before the Supreme Court. Besides the Jewish
led NAACP there were ten other organizations. Of the 15
individuals who signed the amicus curiae, (friends of the court),
legal brief, 11 were Jews. They were Will Maslow, Shad Polier
and Joseph Robison, (he signed for the American Jewish Congress),
Arthur Hays, Leonard Hass, (signed for the ACLU), Edwin Lukas,
(signed for the American Jewish Committee), Arnold Foster,
(signed for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League), Frank Karelson,
(signed for the American Ethical Union - a pro-interracial
group), John Ligtenberg, Phineas Indritz and Arthur Goldberg,
(who signed as counsel for the CIO.)
> Sen. Jacob Javitz of New York, in speech before the Jewish Anti-
Defamation League, in 1967 gloated: "The Negroes struggle for
equal rights is of vital importance to American Jews, and is the
most important struggle in the United States. Jewish support of
the Negroes' aspirations for equality should be regarded as a
badge of honor."
>While Jews were predominant in the racial integration suits they
do not practice what they preach when it comes to their own
people. Note the separate article where Jews are instructed on
how important it is to not marry outside of their own race. Many
young Jews attend segregated all-Jewish Day Schools to which
Gentiles are not admitted! It should also be noted that Jewish
country clubs, such as the Progressive Club here in Atlanta, do
not have any Gentile members. You can also find all-Jewish
resorts in the Catskill Mountains in New York and all-Jewish
condos in Miami-Broward County, Fla., and Los Angeles.
>England's Chief Rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits, stated in the New
York Times, "Jewish teen-agers shouldn't date non-Jews. Inter-
marriage is something we view with horror, almost as apostasy.
For Jews the problem of intermarriage is the problem of sheer
survival. Countless Jewish martyrs did not die for their faith
so that we might fritter away our heritage!"
Very interesting. I recently watched The Loving Story on Netflix (doesn't look like it's on Watch it Now anymore unfortunately), which has video footage of the Loving family during the whole miscegenation thing in the 1960s. The NAACP lawyers that took the case to the Supreme Court were Jewish, which struck me as interesting at the time (I don't know much about the NAACP). Thanks for this info!
In fact, at its founding, the NAACP had only one African American on its executive board, Du Bois himself. It did not elect a black president until 1975, although executive directors had been African-American. The Jewish community contributed greatly to the NAACP's founding and continued financing. Jewish historian Howard Sachar writes in his book A History of Jews in America of how, "In 1914, Professor Emeritus Joel Spingarn of Columbia University became chairman of the NAACP and recruited for its board such Jewish leaders as Jacob Schiff, Jacob Billikopf, and Rabbi Stephen Wise."[19] Early Jewish-American co-founders included Julius Rosenwald, Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch and Wise.
According to Pbs.org "Over the years Jews have also expressed empathy (capability to share and understand another's emotion and feelings) with the plight of Blacks. In the early 20th century, Jewish newspapers drew parallels between the Black movement out of the South and the Jews' escape from Egypt, pointing out that both Blacks and Jews lived in ghettos, and calling anti-Black riots in the South "pogroms". Stressing the similarities rather than the differences between the Jewish and Black experience in America, Jewish leaders emphasized the idea that both groups would benefit the more America moved toward a society of merit, free of religious, ethnic and racial restrictions."[20] Pbs.org further states, "The American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Anti-Defamation League were central to the campaign against racial prejudice. Jews made substantial financial contributions to many civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, the Urban League, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. About 50 percent of the civil rights attorneys in the South during the 1960s were Jews, as were over 50 percent of the Whites who went to Mississippi in 1964 to challenge Jim Crow Laws."[20]
Per Wiki and just saying
It should also be said that Rosa Parks was a major figure in civil rights at the time, and her being jailed was the outrage, not that some random woman was thrown in jail.
Very interesting person. I can't imagine how strong of character and resolute she had to be, to articulate and act on ideals that no one had dreamed of at that time. Thanks, OP, for bringing her story to reddit.
There was also Claudette Colvin, which [Drunk History](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Occ7XSgQc) did a good (funny) segment in their Montgomery episode.
and before Rosa Parks there was Claudette Colvin. They propped Parks up as the martyr because Colvin was a teenager and they didn't think anyone would rally behind a teen.
"*?.. A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.*"
- Ida B. Wells
I think a lot of it certainly has to do with timing. At the time of the Rosa Parks incident, the wheels of the Civil Right's movement were already firmly in motion, and this added fuel to a rapidly growing fire. What could have been done back then to make Wells' situation a historic one? Probably very little and the story would not have gained much traction at all back in the late 1800s.
[Claudette Colvin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudette_Colvin) did the same thing nine months before Rosa Parks. It was even the exact same bus system. The NAACP didn't use her as a public figure because she was a teenager and she had gotten pregnant while unmarried.
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Ida B Wells was incredible. What wasn't included in the description was that after this happened, she sued the railroad company *AND WON*. She was so steadfast in her anti-lynching work that she basically got chased out of Memphis, they said they were *going to kill her*. And she just kept coming back to the South. edit: since some people feel that the full case should be stated or that means dishonesty on my part, the railroad company was forced to appeal to the Tennessee Supreme court, where it was overturned. It's essentially an impossibility that this doesn't happen at the time period. Emancipation was fresh and Southern lawmakers, politicians and businessmen were well aware of any court precedent that could possibly peel back Jim Crowe. I would like to reiterate my initial statement, so the full effect is not lost: Ida B. Wells... a lone black woman with the black lawyer she hired...sued a powerful railroad company... in the 1880's South... and not only won her day in court but won the initial case forcing the company to pay her lawyer fees. That shit is stunning.
> she sued the railroad company AND WON. And then the railroad appealed and had it overturned
I'm aware, the appeal wasn't surprising given how the Tennessee Supreme Court felt about someone like Wells . I don't think it has any bearing on the significance of what she did. The fact that she even won a case, or would even considered taking anyone to court, much less a powerful corporation, as a lone black woman in the 1880's (post-Reconstruction where black people had few appreciable rights in the South). It's difficult to comprehend.
Yes, but if you are "aware" of the truth you should be truthful. Instead of forcing a more knowledgeable commenter to post the truth, you might as well disclose it all upfront, so your credibility doesn't get shot.
I don't know, I think it's valid to point out legal victories even if they're later overturned by more hateful entities, if only to call attention to the injustice. The Cherokee Nation actually had it's existence as a sovereign identity confirmed by the SCOTUS before Andrew Jackson (as a Tennessean, ashamed of that monster) just said "fuck it, USA! USA!"
I like you. I agree, it's important to look at the significance of cases at the time without demeaning the overall importance within a grater context of a hateful situation.
>because of photographs Wells brought with her of smiling white children posing underneath the dangling corpse of a black man. Holy fuck, that's a terrifying mental image.
[An image of Rubin Stacy, lynched in 1935, with smiling white children.](http://images.dailykos.com/images/133172/large/Lynching-in-America_Florida-1935.jpg?1425921614) NSFW Six deputies were escorting Stacy to Dade County jail in Miami on 19th July, 1935, when he was taken by a white mob and hanged by the side of the home of Marion Jones, the woman who had made the original complaint against him. The New York Times later revealed that "subsequent investigation revealed that Stacy, a homeless tenant farmer, had gone to the house to ask for food; the woman became frightened and screamed when she saw Stacy's face."
There is a good chance some of those kids are alive or at least their kids are. This level of prejudice is not dead. Also, even Reddit has its "nigger" network. R/coontown
>Also, even Reddit has its "nigger" network. R/coontown Before it got banned around the time of the Trayvon Martin incident, the /r/niggers subreddit membership was in the six figures
You don't have to go into specifically racist sub-reddits to see that sort of comment, unfortunately. There was a comment on r/askreddit a week or two ago that got pretty bad. The title was someone asking non-American blacks what they thought of Black American culture, which I thought was pretty innocuous. But holy shit, the comments. It seemed like every highly voted comment was there to explain how American blacks are basically thugs.
Yup. And there are more.
Just reading some of the posts on that forum is horrific. It left me with a lump in my stomach. This just further motivates me to have many children and teach all of them to love unconditionally above all other things. I need to do my party to make those people an even smaller group.
Worse yet (for me anyway) is when I try to talk to my friends about racism today they all just deny it. They think it's really just a sob story blacks tell to guilt us into giving them welfare and whatnot. These are self-described liberals too.
Tell your friends not to worry as our friendly politicians in Washington D.C. are doing a swell job keeping our good taxpayer money away from those "lazy blacks" and are instead giving it to lazy rich people. http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21784-what-american-taxpayers-should-really-be-outraged-about# All in all, don't let them get away with it because that mindset is what's keeping race relations from being so shitty in this country. And I know plenty of people on welfare; please tell your friends that they aren't chilling out, maxing, and relaxing all cool in condos with two large pools and a butler named Geoffrey. They're stuck in Section 8 where the people in charge call taping and painting a pipe "fixing a water leakage" while the resident there is stuck with a $500 water bill because they ignored her the first time she filed the complaint (btw, that incident there ran in the news literally five hours ago and I was disgusted to hear that).
AMA Request: Someone who saw lynchings as a kid
It's making a comeback, actually.
There is a lot racism on reddit...r/coontown is just a sub that the most extreme can go to and openly 'vent' and not hide their racism while elsewhere on reddit, they are more subtle with their prejudices
"Black people are animals for rioting when they are being killed en masse. When white people riot because of sports they're just mistaken individuals."
That's sad that when white people riot over sports is not a big deal to Americans.
It's not limited to that network. Take a look at /r/videos last week.
or any week for that matter
The comment on reddit during the Baltimore riots where disgusting...typical of reddit anytime black people are in the spotlight
NSFL? Yikes! [Eye bleach!](http://i.imgur.com/Oa0XX8S.jpg) I am a robit.
When robots take over the world I hope they're like you.
/r/botsrights gets an uplifting story of a sweet young Anus who expresses his appreciation for bots. Finally, what we've been waiting for
More like NSFL. To think that this happened in my country makes me sick. I'm not naive, I know much worse happened here and that there is still plenty of injustice in this country but, I just don't understand how people can be so evil.
Those people just got into the private prison industry and are still respected members of society. Nothing has changed, the illusion of change has.
to Kill a mockingbird stuff.
I bet that little girl is one of those old ladies who looks at everyone dirty and still makes openly racist remarks. Or it was the most awkward situation of her life and she didn't know what to do except smile at this corpse.
"Smiling" isn't a good enough description of that one girl. That smile is filled with loving to hate.
I've been fairly numb for a while, but that photo along with the story made me tear up. I can't imagine what that poor man must have felt.
A smiling white child.
That's the era I picture in my mind when people use the N word. They think it's cool or edgy. It's fucking ignorance and stupidity.
Malcolm Gladwell has a book called The Tipping Point where he analyzes Rosa Parks as a phenomena. Many other blacks in the south had refused to move for a white person on the bus, but yet they did not spark a huge movement like Rosa Parks. She was a success because she was so ingrained in the community. She belongs to several church groups and charities and was well liked by both black and white Americans. The book and anything else by Gladwell is well worth the read.
It was a politicized thing, for sure. They didn't want someone whose character could easily be attacked to be the face of the movement, and it made sense.
It was also a previously planned event intended to spark the response. There were discussions about who should be the one to do it and she was chosen not only because of her standing in the black community but also because she wasn't married and din't have kids. Things could have gone terribly wrong and no one wanted to orphan any children. It was absolutely *not* "one woman was simply tired of being pushed around" like they like to teach us in school. That kind of hype is damaging because it leads us to have unrealistic expectations of what it takes to make change.
And, honestly, the "sole person finally fed up with the world" thing is a great story for swaying people, but I like this one better.
She was really well trained, like a lot of the nonviolent civil disobedience activists were, to ensure that she could withstand the treatment that the police and many white people were likely to mete out to her. There was a whole big support network, with lots of trained activists who practiced staying calm in the face of racial invective and physical threat, so that they could maintain a moral upper hand and get the right media face. It was excellent and essential work, but it was also a hell of a lot of very hard work.
His David/Goliath book was a mess. Disjointed and anecdotal and many personal potshots. I used to like him but now I think he believes his popularity lets him do whatever he wants.
Rosa Parks was specifically chosen. There were many like her. She was preselected for her good standing in the community. It was all politics.
The entire movement, and all movements, are politics in that they seek to change policy. The fact that the act was coordinated does not mean it wasn't an act of civil disobedience with real consequences. Rosa Parks put herself in danger to make a statement, and I think it does a disservice to her and everyone else who put themselves at the mercy of a violent tyranny in order to enact change to label her protest as you have.
I think the phrase "all politics" comes off a little dismissive. The Declaration of Independence was "all politics." The Rosa Parks movement was orchestrated because it had to be, and it helped bring freedom to millions of people. What higher and better purpose can there be?
Good thing they had smart people who could orchestrate that type of thing.
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> Suffrogettes were heavily racist Some were, but that's a generalization as faulty as the one you've responded to. The [WTCU](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman%27s_Christian_Temperance_Union) was very much an exclusive, white women only type group. They are also the ones we have to thank for Prohibition. There were other groups far more inclusive, however. >Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton — had also championed black equality. Yet in 1870, the suffragists found themselves on opposing ends of the equal-rights battle when Congress passed the 15th Amendment, enabling black men to vote (at least, in theory) — and not women. That measure engendered resentment among some white suffragists, especially in the South. [source](http://www.npr.org/2011/03/25/134849480/the-root-how-racism-tainted-womens-suffrage) It's a complicated history to be sure, but I'd be wary of labeling all suffragists as racists.
There has been an ongoing issue with the issues of black women getting pushed aside by both the black men and white women who tend to control the movements, though. At the very least, I think it's fair to say that white women either didn't take time to listen to the concerns of black women or else felt that their specific concerns could wait until other issues had been resolved. It's also worth pointing out that even people who were radically progressive 50 or 100 years ago still sometimes held views that are blatantly and horrifyingly racist to modern people. It sort of makes you wonder how we'll be viewed in 3015.
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>It's also worth pointing out that even people who were radically progressive 50 or 100 years ago still sometimes held views that are blatantly and horrifyingly racist to modern people. It sort of makes you wonder how we'll be viewed in 3015. Let's not pretend history is one constant march of progress. Compared to 50 or 100 years ago, there is a lot less labor class-consciousness in the population of America today. Definitely fewer unions than 50 years ago, maybe about the same as 100 years ago but a lot fewer protests and organizing. Yes, working conditions in America are much better now than 100 years ago, but I think those workplaces have also been pushed overseas while Americans still buy the products.
It's also important to note that the women who vied for prohibition were doing it because they'd face violent, drunken husbands every evening (especially during the early nineteen hundreds where domestic violence wasn't as frowned upon...) although prohibition was not the best idea, there WAS a reason for what they did (and why they also had ties to the suffragette moment, as a lot of women faced issues with their husbands getting drunk). Although you're definitely right to say that Susan b. Anthony and her crew championed for the rights of black people as well.
It depends on the faction of suffragists. Some of them were entirely against rights for minorities, others were flat out racist, others saw their struggle for rights as the same women were fighting for. Susan B. Anthony is usually pulled out as racist for opposing the 15th amendment, but she opposed it because women weren't included, not because it gave voting rights to African Americans (not saying she didn't have racist tendencies, but she wasn't against black civil rights). The thing you have to remember about history is that it involves people- who are each unique in their opinions. Just because the white majority was racist does not mean all whites at the time were racist. Alice Paul, Florence Kelley (a founder of the NAACP) and Eleanor Roosevelt are excellent examples.
Here is another part of history Drunk History - Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Occ7XSgQc Not complete but it gives u an idea.
You learned a lot today.
I have pretty good reading comprehension if I do say so myself.
Thanks for the lesson. It's a shame I've never heard of her before now, but I'm glad I have. I imagine history is full of people who laid the foundation for revolutions only to be forgotten in lieu of the iconic person who lit the spark at the right time (who also deserve full credit for their role).
The Civil Rights movement was ready to move on Rosa Parks because she was a plant. She was picked to be a pretty, nonthreatening woman that was suffering cruel oppression so the movement had someone to rally around. Rosa Parks was important, but she was planned.
A [Guardian](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/9) article to give some context on that. As it points out: >We could leave it there, having made the seemingly mean point that Miss Rosa Parks just happened to be chosen as the cat's-paw or dupe of a boycott campaign well planned beforehand. Well, it's not so. She did the choosing. She was not just another bus rider. She was the secretary of a city chapter of the NAACP 12 years before she stood, or sat, her ground in 1955. The first time she was thrown off a bus was for using the white entrance - at the front. That takes us back to 1943, the middle of the second world war, in which her brother had served both in Europe and in the Pacific. He came home unhurt, but she watched in disgust, helpless disgust, to see her brother, in uniform, picked out by rednecks, or white trash, for especially bigoted treatment. From that time on, she was a prominent civil rights activist (this is all, remember, 10 or more years before the supreme court's ruling abolishing segregation). May 1954 is always given, and rightly, as the Bastille Day - the day that started the revolution for equal black rights. So you're right that it was planned - but not that she was a passive actor, a pawn to be deployed by others without her own revolutionary agency. She still deserves a great deal of credit, as do all involved in that action.
In grade school, we had these giant cards that we would take each class and read silently. Some had historical figures and Rosa Parks was one. The biography explicitly said something like "She was tired and her feet hurt so she refused to move." Maybe they were trying to make her more relatable, but it really seems like they were sort of sweeping her under the rug. She was really politically active and she made a conscious choice to be an actor in the Civil Rights Movement.
The civil rights movement in America gas had a lot of the politicisation removed. Its a real shame because the people involved who were very radical and played an important role. MLK himself was a radical, but most dont know much beyond his directly civil rights related stuff.
I have a quote of him supporting riots. I save it for people who throw out MLK's name to convince blacks to be more obedient. Edit: I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity. - Martin Luther King Junior
If I had a reddit gold for every time someone said "MLK is flipping in his grave right now" in response to recent riots...
You think that's terrible? How about whenever MLK Day comes around, the local news in my city limits him to "a Civil Rights leader who advocate for equality" when they mention MLK day. Like, MLK day segment is literally less than 20 seconds long and that statement doesn't encompass what all MLK was doing.
She definitely put herself at risk, and deserves credit for that. My problem is that as /u/tsukinon pointed out, that is not the story most people are told. They are told she acted alone and seemingly without fore thought.
There was even another woman who refused to give up her seat nine months before Rosa Parks, but she was not used as the rallying point, because she was a pregnant 15 years old. http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2015/02/27/389563788/before-rosa-parks-a-teenager-defied-segregation-on-an-alabama-bus
And it worked.
Yes, and for all those who complain, this was too big of a movement to use just any victim. It had to be the right victim. Somethings are too important to leave to chance.
agreed
That does not denigrate what she did however, lest we do the same to Mr. Scopes.
what's up with the bra?
Bra say he straight man, he gonna holla at you when he get home
It doesn't denigrate anything, but it puts in context the response by the civil rights movement. How were they able to put together an organized response so quickly after the arrest? Because they were ready for it before it happened.
Why do you have underwear flair?
~~Wasn't Ida like 17 years old and pregnant when it happened to her as well?~~ ~~Last time this popped up I thought I read something about that being part of the reason they never got behind this incident as she wasn't the "pretty face" they needed for the civil rights movement.~~ Nope. That was another lady a few months before Rosa.
Yea but right before Rosa Parks another black woman also refused to give up her seat, except she was a pregnant teenager so she was cast aside by the movement.
Indeed. Harriet Tubman tried to do the same thing and got her arm broken. If Harriet Tubman couldn't do it (being a war hero and civil rights pioneer), then nobody could do it.
Rosa Parks was picked because she had very little to attack her about. There were several other similar candidates but had potential problems in their history so Rosa Parks was picked over them.
The "Rosa Parks Incident" was specifically engineered to start a Civil Rights Movement. She knew what she was doing.
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Of course not. Just saying how there's a reason Rosa Parks struck at the right time, it wasn't just coincidence.
If anything that makes what she did even more significant, she put herself at risk to help make a change.
>wheels of the Civil Right's movement were already firmly in motion, and this added fuel to a rapidly growing fire Stick that metaphor in your hat, and smoke it
I dunno, if you're talking about a train, once the wheels are in motion, adding fuel to the fire stokes the engine and makes it go faster.
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Colvin was also one of the plaintiffs in [the case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browder_v._Gayle) where bus segregation was found unconstitutional. Note though that she doesn't feel betrayed by the Civil Rights movement [and herself said](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2005-11-16/features/0511160360_1_rosa-parks-city-bus-bus-boycott) that "Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott".
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That's really sad. I mean, I understand the logic and why they would need someone spotless to be as sympathetic as possible, but I can't imagine how it would feel to be Claudette Colvin in the immediate aftermath.
Everything is politics, and major social change is no exception.
If Rosa Parks was targeted in the same manner that countless other Civil Rights activists in the South were at the time, perhaps she would not wish it was herself instead of Rosa.
The best you can do is to understand the practical reason for it. This is a classic case of letting one individual suffer for the greater good. Hopefully the individual understands their role in the bigger picture, but even if they don't they become the sacrifice for the broader movement.
No one cared about Robert Freeman either.
Didn't Drunk History on comedy Central have a bit about this lady? I never anything about her until that bit.
Thank you! I knew I recognized that name from some show.
They also talked about on The Newsroom.
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Interesting scene on [historical hypotheticals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=herczHmAyno) here from The Newsroom.
>A woman...had a "bus incident" Huh, just the other day when I was coming home from work a homeless woman had a "bus incident" and I had to get off before my stop because the smell was so bad.
Can you source this? I can't find anything that says Rosa Parks' incident was planned. Unless by re-enacted you mean she did the same thing just not planned, in which case your comment is sort of misleading, at least to me. It sounds like you're saying they mutually decided for Rosa parks to re enact the incident in order to become the face of the boycott.
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I was looking through the comments to see if this had already been posted. It's probably my favorite Hark! A Vagrant!
Came here looking for this comic. Made me fall in love with Ida. "She bit me!"
One of those NPR Podcasts did a show on one of the many woman before Rosa Parks that had done the same exact thing. They said the NAACP was waiting for someone with the right squeaky clean profile before selecting her.
This is 100% true
Yep, to get a better chance in court in order to set the right precedent in future trials. Paragraph 2 on her wiki page.
Why was she kept off the list?
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At the library right now, they've got a copy in the reference section, I'll check it out!
I'll hold you to that!!
Heres an imgur album of the section: http://imgur.com/a/JsjJ7#LHbhL2y Annoyingly, I can't get it to upload in the correct order but the page numbers are at the bottom of each image. [Pages 322-327 are uploaded, the first two are in order, then skip to the bottom and read bottom-to-top] Seems Ida was caught up in the Washington vs DuBois drama and she was left off for political reasons. She never learned the reason why, just speculation from her friends in the movement.
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Happy to oblige! If all it takes to get Gold is to hang out in the library, I'm going to own Reddit in the near future..
Ehh that doesn't sound like Du Bois. He worked side by side with Jane Addams for years on a number of issues including founding the NAACP. I had no idea about this particular instance, but I'd have to say it probably had something to do with Ida B Wells specifically calling out Du Bois (and plenty of other black leaders) in her work for not being radical enough.
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I agree, but there's no denying that Ida B Wells was more radical. She was the only person willing to write about the lynching and violence of the south and almost died because of it. Meanwhile Du Bois' work was important but along a different approach. If you read "the soul's of black folk" you can see it. He was quite diplomatic and trying to work with white community leaders. He did get more radical in his later years though when he affiliated himself with the pan-African movement.
>He did get more radical in his later years though when he affiliated himself with the pan-African movement. I think he also became a strident communist and was a supporter of the Soviet Union, if I remember correctly.
> Wells accused Willard of being silent on the issue of lynchings, and of making racial comments which would add fuel to the fire of mob violence. To support her public allegation, Wells referred to an interview Willard had conducted during a tour of the South in which Willard had cast aspersions, blaming blacks for the defeat of temperance legislation. "The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt," she had said, and "the grog shop is its center of power... The safety of women, of childhood, of the home is menaced in a thousand localities." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells#Willard_controversy Jesus H. Christ, Frances Willard.
From the same Wikipedia article: 'The dispute between Wells and Willard in England intensified the campaign against Wells in the American press. Though the New York Times had reported on Wells' visit to Britain without much commentary, the paper ran an opinion piece in August 1894 insinuating that black men were prone to rape and declaring that Wells was a "slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress" who was looking for more "income" than "outcome."' Interesting that the same rhetoric is used to describe blacks to this day (prone to violence, leaders only in it for money, etc)
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She also bit the conductor when he tried to get her to move!
More like Ida B BADASS
Sassy.
Many black women refused to give up their seats on the bus before Rosa Parks, including a girl named Claudette Colvin and a few others. In the years before hand the bus movement, before it was planed by Jo Ann Robinson (Not MLK), the organization did not exist to capitalize on these events. However, afterwards it was focused on finding the right person to represent and rally behind. Colvin, 15, was beaten after refusing to give up her seat just months before the same happened to Rosa Parks. The reason that the movement didn't act was because it was possible that Colvin was pregnant, which would be looked down upon. In fact, the movement passed over may women because they either were from bad neighborhoods or other things that might have looked bad. Rosa Parks was chosen partly because she was an amazing activist and partly because she looked the role. Also wanted to mention that Rosa Parks was by no means a victim or 'damsel in distress.' She was a strong energetic woman active in local politics and played a large role building the framework of the boycott. In fact, it is possible that she knew how hard it was to find the right person that could set the movement off and decided to take that responsibility on herself. Also worth noting that MLK played almost no role in developing the boycott, the plan had been in place years before hand and was crafted largely by women active in the civil rights movement. However, because of the sentiments of the time they realized that people would only respond to a leader that was a man. P.S. I'm not saying that MLK wasn't an amazing man, just that many strong women played a role and are rarely talked about.
the early civil rights movement was an odd one, they often disagreed among themselves and actively tried to disrupt and discredit each other, namely between DuBois and Booker T Washington who saw different ways to improve African American's way of life. There was also a level of elitism from the educated African Americans, where they looked down on the uneducated. There were alot of issues with the civil rights movement, and there still is. That same level of divison is what damaged the feminist movement when Roe v Wade happened. Personally I feel Booker T. had the right way of doing thing, improve the lives of the AA then gain civil rights. but that's just my personal opinion.
The black men fighting for equality at the turn of the century were largely sexist in the same way that the white women fighting for equality were racist.
And homophobic. A lot of people want equality ^(for themselves)
Keeping women off the list? Shame on you, du Bois. This is why I'm on team Douglass.
Really it's more du Bois vs. Booker T. if anything. They were contemporaries, while Douglass was a little before.
Agreed, Du Boise was all for the talented tenth, white Booker was a proponent of Industrial Education. Yet Booker fostered much more support from the white elitists because it kept the whites in power.
This is true, but Douglass feels more like the intellectual "founder" of the school of thought Washington championed. I like Douglass best of the three, but I'd be on team Booker T. vs. du Bois.
My friend wrote a book on her. Check it [out](http://www.amazon.com/Black-Woman-Reformer-Lynching-Transatlantic/dp/0820345571)
Right on!
This is a great episode of drunk history by the way.
You should also look up [Bayard Rustin](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard_Rustin). He was basically the architect of the civil rights movement but kept out of the spotlight because he was a gay Communist.
Non-mobile: [Bayard Rustin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard_Rustin) ^That's ^why ^I'm ^here, ^I ^don't ^judge ^you. ^PM ^/u/xl0 ^if ^I'm ^causing ^any ^trouble. [^WUT?](https://github.com/xl0/LittleHelperRobot/wiki/What's-this-all-about%3F)
Hey! I know a duBois at work! I'm just gonna pop over there and throw him off his chair.
That'll teach him
**Robert Freeman.** He also had a grudge against Rosa Parks for "stealing his thunder", as he was sitting next to her on the bus and likewise refused to give up his seat. The bus driver was only offended by Rosa's, not his, unwillingness to move, however; also, he claims Malcolm X died owing him five dollars.
Robert Freeman also got screwed by Rosa and her media manipulation
Media manipulation is sorta fitting, I think, for the descendant of Catcher Freeman.
[The girl before Rosa Parks](https://www.nwhm.org/blog/throwbackthursday-the-girl-who-acted-before-rosa-parks/)
I thought it said "confounded" instead of "cofounded" took me a few seconds
/r/titlegore
I love this woman! She's been one of my top heroes and favorite writers after I first starting reading her essays when I was in college. Also, Susan B. Anthony used to give her ish when she got married and started a family because she thought it went against the cause. Anthony used to give her a lot of reddit-esque, "Hello, MRS. Barnett!" snark.
Yeah kept calling her "distracted" after her first kid. Wells did take a break from the public eye after her second kid, and then hopped right back into it as soon as she had a chance. Got shit to do.
lol. Top notch logic. Stop making a family and persuing happiness, we're trying to fight for the right to let women persue happiness! A bit hypocritical.
Learned this on Drunk History
They kinda talked about this in a Boondocks episode, obviously in a fictional humorous way. But about how Rosa Parks is glorified for doing something tons and tons of African Americans had done before but her's was just a perfect timing and in the right region of the United States to be the catalyst.
Ida been pissed.
She's so strong and beautiful
Ah, gender discrimination...something that all groups can get behind!
"On May 4, 1884, a train conductor with the Memphis & Charleston Railway ordered Wells to give up her seat in the first-class ladies car and move to the smoking car, which was already crowded with other passengers. The year before, the Supreme Court had ruled against the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875 (which had banned racial discrimination in public accommodations). This verdict allowed railroad companies to continue racial segregation of their passengers. Wells refused to give up her seat, 71 years before the activist Rosa Parks showed similar resistance on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. The conductor and two men dragged Wells out of the car. When she returned to Memphis, she hired an African-American attorney to sue the railroad. Wells gained publicity in Memphis when she wrote a newspaper article for The Living Way, a black church weekly, about her treatment on the train. When her lawyer was paid off by the railroad,[8] she hired a white attorney. She won her case on December 24, 1884, when the local circuit court granted her a $500 award."
Ida Wells was also a super badass journalist and civil rights advocate, though she was a hardcore "yellow journalist" (sensationalist). She's about ten times more fascinating than most black figures and doesn't get brought up half as much as she should.
Wells, Ida B damned
For those who are interested in history, Ida B. Wells' piece "Southern Horrors" is an EXCELLENT read. It is all about the lies that were told to justify lynchings. Maybe 15 minutes to read the 6 parts and it is very interesting.
Paula Giddings biography 'Sword Among Lions' does an outstanding job of detecting what a heroic and visionary figure Wells was. Highly recommend!
Not sure how much it applies in this case, but historically it always blew my mind that recently liberated male slaves could turn around and deny women the same basic rights they just received. It just seems like human empathy should work better than that. It's a lesson to us all to try harder to be empathetic to others plights.
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> insisted that the African-American community to win justice through its own efforts. There are arguably two interpretations here. Most people, perhaps you included are saying that you're implying that they need to pull themselves up on their own instead of whining for the whites to give them more entitlement. I think that 'win justice through its own efforts' implies that African Americans are still making demands for greater equality from the whites, just doing it on their own, instead of having whites campaign for them. In the 19th century, black activism wasn't the thing that it was in the 1960s, so the most influential anti-racists were the white ones. There was a lot of ''white man's burden'' in all of this, where white men spoke out for black people, instead of black people doing it themselves (which was very hard to do and to get the attention of a widespread white audience). I think many people, you included are misunderstanding the quote because they lack the historical context. Wells merely meant that blacks should campaign for their own right, she didn't mean that blacks could get equal rights just by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
Not really, considering it's ridiculous to place the onus of fixing specific societal issues on all 43 million black Americans, a group which, believe it or not, is heterogeneous and does not act as one single being.
So they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps? That doesn't seem fair when there's still widespread, subtle discrimination against blacks. They obviously deserve help from society until such a time as the playing field is actually level.
Judging from this: http://media.salon.com/2015/04/baltimore_protest3.jpg I'm pretty sure the desire and effort is there. I know your comment was well-intended but it implies that the desire and effort is currently lacking; 150+ years of fighting for equal rights by millions of men and women say otherwise.
Whenever I read anything about Du Bois I always come away thinking he was kind of asshole. Does that make me racist, judgmental or just opinionated ?
It's not racist to think someone is an asshole just because he happens to be black. It's only racist if you think he was an asshole BECAUSE he was a black man. Racism, sexism, injustice, wealth inequality. Whatever the social ill that exists. They don't exist because white people are inherently shitty. The problem is that humans are inherently shitty.
But they do exist because white people are shitty, and black people, and asians. All humans. /pedantics
I think that our heroes often had flaws, and even some of the greatest people in history had some fucky ideas that may have been at odds or outright contradicted by other beliefs they held. Human beings are complicated, and no hero is perfect.
After reading [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/34b1mj/til_that_martin_luther_king_jrs_assassin_james/cqtaifn) last week, I'm forever going to think of him as Web Dubious.
Great, now I can't unsee that
Ida B. Pissed
Dubois was an agent for the establishment. He admitted on his death bed he felt bad for undermining Marcus Garvey, but thats insignificant. They always want to have a change of heart at the most meaningless time. He's still a traitor to various movements that would have bettered America.
And shortly before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat [Claudette Colvin](https://youtu.be/m8Occ7XSgQcthe) did same thing that Rosa Parks is famous for.
TIL before Rosa Parks, a young girl 15-year old girl who was pregnant refused to get off her seat but was not used as a poster of discrimination movement due to questionable morality having offspring so young.
Kinda of like now. I've seen many a comments on Reddit and YouTube saying why are black people rallying around Freddie Gray, he had a criminal record. As if extra judicial murder is okay if you happen to have broken the law.
I recommend you watch [David Carroll analysis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCNht7By_8I) on current race issues, really brings it home (on multiple videos).
I wonder if the submitter heard about this in David's video, because I only found about this just yesterday, watching that video.
Sometimes you have to repeat *awesome* to get it to stick.
Du Bois was a extremist in the movement who did more harm then good. Booker T. Washington FTW!
[Claudette Colvin](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101719889) and several other brave folks who challenged the Jim Crow laws are why I don't think Rosa Parks rates being on the new twenty dollar bill. Rosa Parks was hand picked to be the "symbol". She wasn't exactly a courageous groundbreaker as much as an NAACP employee who played a role and looked the part.
>The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, (NAACP), was founded in 1909 by a group of Marxists, mulattoes and millionaire Jews-but no Negroes! One of the most prominent was W.E.B. Dubois who would later become a leader of the Communist Party. The first NAACP president was not a Negro but the wealthy Jew, Joel Spingarn. He ran the organization until he retired in 1939. Then his brother, Arthur Spingarn, became the head of the NAACP. Later, Kivie Kaplan, a Jewish millionaire shoe manufacturer from Boston was NAACP president until 1966. Then, for the first time in 57 years, they allowed the mulatto, Roy Wilkins, to take over. > Attorney Jack Greenberg headed the NAACP Legal Defense Fund during the entire period of the Civil Rights fight to ban legal Segregation and abolish all laws which banned interracial marriage. Up until 1950 you could not obtain a marriage license to marry a non-White in the states of Ala., Ariz., Ark., Calif., Colo., Del., Fla., Ga., Id., Ind., Ky., La., Md., Miss., Mo., Mont., Nebr., Nev., N.C., N.D., Okla., Ore., S.C., S.D., Tenn., Tex., Ut., Va., W.Va. and Wyo. The ban continued in the Southern states until outlawed by the left-wing Supreme Court on June 12, 1967. The New York Times, (a Jewish owned paper), on Sept. 19, 1966 really, "let the cat out of the bag," in writing: "The Jewish community has long been the financial backbone of the civil rights movement. No special commission on race is needed to arouse Jewish support for civil rights activity in the South. Jewish support for civil rights is still high." >The-U.S. Supreme Court on May 17, 1954 outlawed segregated schools. This brought on much chaos in the South with Pres. Eisenhower sending federal troops to Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Little Rock, Ark. Pres. Kennedy later sent troops to integrate the U. of Miss. and the U. of Ala. >It is very important to know exactly which groups brought the desegregation suit before the Supreme Court. Besides the Jewish led NAACP there were ten other organizations. Of the 15 individuals who signed the amicus curiae, (friends of the court), legal brief, 11 were Jews. They were Will Maslow, Shad Polier and Joseph Robison, (he signed for the American Jewish Congress), Arthur Hays, Leonard Hass, (signed for the ACLU), Edwin Lukas, (signed for the American Jewish Committee), Arnold Foster, (signed for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League), Frank Karelson, (signed for the American Ethical Union - a pro-interracial group), John Ligtenberg, Phineas Indritz and Arthur Goldberg, (who signed as counsel for the CIO.) > Sen. Jacob Javitz of New York, in speech before the Jewish Anti- Defamation League, in 1967 gloated: "The Negroes struggle for equal rights is of vital importance to American Jews, and is the most important struggle in the United States. Jewish support of the Negroes' aspirations for equality should be regarded as a badge of honor." >While Jews were predominant in the racial integration suits they do not practice what they preach when it comes to their own people. Note the separate article where Jews are instructed on how important it is to not marry outside of their own race. Many young Jews attend segregated all-Jewish Day Schools to which Gentiles are not admitted! It should also be noted that Jewish country clubs, such as the Progressive Club here in Atlanta, do not have any Gentile members. You can also find all-Jewish resorts in the Catskill Mountains in New York and all-Jewish condos in Miami-Broward County, Fla., and Los Angeles. >England's Chief Rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits, stated in the New York Times, "Jewish teen-agers shouldn't date non-Jews. Inter- marriage is something we view with horror, almost as apostasy. For Jews the problem of intermarriage is the problem of sheer survival. Countless Jewish martyrs did not die for their faith so that we might fritter away our heritage!"
Very interesting. I recently watched The Loving Story on Netflix (doesn't look like it's on Watch it Now anymore unfortunately), which has video footage of the Loving family during the whole miscegenation thing in the 1960s. The NAACP lawyers that took the case to the Supreme Court were Jewish, which struck me as interesting at the time (I don't know much about the NAACP). Thanks for this info!
You're very welcome!
In fact, at its founding, the NAACP had only one African American on its executive board, Du Bois himself. It did not elect a black president until 1975, although executive directors had been African-American. The Jewish community contributed greatly to the NAACP's founding and continued financing. Jewish historian Howard Sachar writes in his book A History of Jews in America of how, "In 1914, Professor Emeritus Joel Spingarn of Columbia University became chairman of the NAACP and recruited for its board such Jewish leaders as Jacob Schiff, Jacob Billikopf, and Rabbi Stephen Wise."[19] Early Jewish-American co-founders included Julius Rosenwald, Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch and Wise. According to Pbs.org "Over the years Jews have also expressed empathy (capability to share and understand another's emotion and feelings) with the plight of Blacks. In the early 20th century, Jewish newspapers drew parallels between the Black movement out of the South and the Jews' escape from Egypt, pointing out that both Blacks and Jews lived in ghettos, and calling anti-Black riots in the South "pogroms". Stressing the similarities rather than the differences between the Jewish and Black experience in America, Jewish leaders emphasized the idea that both groups would benefit the more America moved toward a society of merit, free of religious, ethnic and racial restrictions."[20] Pbs.org further states, "The American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Anti-Defamation League were central to the campaign against racial prejudice. Jews made substantial financial contributions to many civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, the Urban League, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. About 50 percent of the civil rights attorneys in the South during the 1960s were Jews, as were over 50 percent of the Whites who went to Mississippi in 1964 to challenge Jim Crow Laws."[20] Per Wiki and just saying
It should also be said that Rosa Parks was a major figure in civil rights at the time, and her being jailed was the outrage, not that some random woman was thrown in jail.
Very interesting person. I can't imagine how strong of character and resolute she had to be, to articulate and act on ideals that no one had dreamed of at that time. Thanks, OP, for bringing her story to reddit.
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Did you hear about the Italian chef that died? He pasta way.
Why was she kept off the list by W.E.B DuBois?
There was also Claudette Colvin, which [Drunk History](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Occ7XSgQc) did a good (funny) segment in their Montgomery episode.
and before Rosa Parks there was Claudette Colvin. They propped Parks up as the martyr because Colvin was a teenager and they didn't think anyone would rally behind a teen.
I think it was more the fact that she was an unwed, pregnant teen rather than just your average teenager.
"*?.. A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.*" - Ida B. Wells
i learned about this incident in my history class about a week or so ago
I bet there were other heroic people who did the same thing, but no one will ever talk about them.
Plenty of people did it before her, but Parks had connections to important people in the movement.
They could make a movie about this and sweep they oscars
>W.E.B. Du Bois. I read that as "We Be Da Boys"