Further — or really, as counterpoint to Dennis G.’s piece below on the Confederate Party’s fear of art — let me just say here:
We are two years short of her centennial, but it’s never too soon to notice the difference between those who recognize injustice and act at real personal risk to end it…
…and the other kind.
Image: Rosa Parks Bus at the Henry Ford Museum.
Michael
Modern day teatards might not have been in front of the pack clearing out a sit in at a Woolworth’s counter, but they’d be sure in shit standing in the back of the crowd and wielding axe handles and baseball bats.
arguingwithsignposts
wonder if she’ll get a hagiography like St. Ronnie got this week in USA Today?
ETA: @Punchy, the larger image shows it’s “Cleveland Ave.”
Punchy
Why was she going to Cleveland? Was she a Browns or Indians fan?
Poopyman
Must be photoshopped. There was never in the history of transportation a bus that immaculately clean.
Tom Levenson
@arguingwithsignposts: Yup. In response to popular demand, I’m shrinking the images I post, hopefully at not too much resolution cost.
scav
See, look what providing public transportation leads to! /modern right-wing logic
Bob
@Poopyman:
It was restored.
Napoleon
@Punchy:
I don’t think Rosa got involved with lost causes.
The Civil Rights Museum in Memphis as a bus like that you can board and when you sit down in it a recording plays of the bus driver saying “get to the back of the bus n—–r”.
geg6
@Michael:
Much like Haley Barbour, I imagine.
Happy Rosa Parks’ Birthday, everyone. It is good to remember true American heroes.
LGRooney
@Poopyman: I was thinking the same thing because we all know that life back then was in black & white.
Culture of Truth
So she’s 2 years younger than Reagan…
But the Gipper restored America’s belief in itself! I know becaue I read that in my free paper this morning so it must be true.
Culture of Truth
“Get the Government out of my civil rights!!”
Poopyman
@LGRooney: Good catch! I had forgotten about that.
Violet
OT – Weather in Dallas is a mess. Ice and snow everywhere. It’s going to be an interesting day for people trying to get around re: Super Bowl events. Flights are canceled or delayed. Roads are closed or very slow. Lots of accidents. Dallas very rarely gets this kind of weather event so don’t budget taxpayer money for the equipment to deal with it. That’s a smart decision most of the time, but with the eyes of the country watching for it for the Super Bowl, well, yikes.
thomas Levenson
@Violet: I can’t tell you how much I’d enjoy a blizzard-stricken SB in Dallas, after all the handwringing about an NY SB.
Mr. Schaden, meet Mr. Freude.
Face
OT: Can we please just vote to let these assholes secede?
Even 3rd grade civic classes graduates know this isn’t allowed. The level of Teabag pandering is off-the-charts.
Boudica
@Violet: Yes, I’m sitting here watching the snow fall in DFW…at least 2 inches so far, on top of the ice that fell Tuesday and hasn’t melted yet. I’m not going out in this mess. (Luckily it’s my day off.) Schools have been closed for 4 days now. Never seen anything like it in my 20+ years here.
martha
@thomas Levenson: Yep. And we could never let all those Richie Riches sit OUTSIDE, like in Green Bay, Chicago, or Pittsburgh!!! They’ll just get stuck cause they can’t fly in to make the game. LOL.
Violet
@thomas Levenson:
It’s not supposed to get above freezing in Dallas until Saturday. Super Bowl Sunday itself should be quite nice, although colder than normal. But the today and tomorrow until the thaw are still going to be traffic nightmares.
I have a friend who is supposed to be driving to the Dallas today for the Super Bowl. I think she’s not going to be doing that.
Citizen_X
Hmph. Is there a copy of Protocols of the Elders of Zion at the Henry Motherfucking Ford Museum?
Rosa Parks was too decent a person to be associated with such low company.
HeartlandLiberal
Rosa Parks was a true American hero and patriot. It is difficult if you know what society in Alabama and the South of the time was like to imagine the courage it took for her to defy an entire culture, and literally risk her life just by insisting on her right to a seat on a bus
My home town is Birmingham, Alabama. I grew up around and in Birmingham in the 50’s and 60’s. I left after finishing college at Birmingham-Southern in 1969. I visit relatives and friends. But I don’t think I will never move back to Alabama.
For those of you who were not there, imagine separate water fountains for Black and White, Blacks not able to use elevators in downtown office buildings.
If you ever are in Birmingham, go to the Civil Rights Museum across the street from the west side of Kelly Ingram Park.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Civil_Rights_Institute
Before you visit the museum, walk through the park. Be sure to walk between the two statues of the police dogs on leashes lunging into the sidewalk from either side.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/berlyjen/3250893301/
When you visit the museum, be prepared to spend two or three hours. It is designed so you walk through time, from the beginning of the history of Birmingham in the late 1800’s, up to today, following the story of what life was like for Blacks in the city.
The exhibits are among the best I have ever seen in how they often combine static items with film and often audio as you move through an area.
Among the exhibits is part of the burned out shell of the bus that was burned in Anniston at the early height of the Civil Rights movement in the 1961.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5149667
Violet
@Boudica:
It’s crazy weather, isn’t it? Dallas just doesn’t get weather like this.
@martha:
LOL. So true. A bunch of flights at DFW are canceled or delayed.
I guess the real Richie Riches fly their corporate jets. But you can’t land those if the airport isn’t equipped for planes to land.
Napoleon
By the way I have been reading David Halberstam’s book The Children on the civil rights era and I would recommend it.
drkrick
The Neville Brothers salute to Sister Rosa:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKCsZc37esU
Edited because the link button didn’t seem to work. Every day is a good day to listen to the Neville Brothers.
stuckinred
@HeartlandLiberal: Don’t forget the Civil Rights Memorial designed by Maya Lin who also designed the Wall.
Nicole
And a second cheer for Claudette Colvin, the girl who was arrested for giving up her seat nine months prior to Rosa Parks, but who wasn’t used in the lawsuit because she was also arrested for alleged assault (being 15, single and pregnant didn’t help, either).
I remember when it became more common knowledge that Rosa Parks’ refusal was perhaps a bit planned, and how disappointed some people I knew were that it wasn’t a spontaneous act from a seamstress who was tired. But I was so impressed with the forethought that went into the bus boycott- how smart the NAACP were to know they’d need someone who was beyond any sort of reproach for her personal life, and strong enough to withstand the legal process to come.
And how little some things have changed- the media, the public, will still look for any reason to challenge a person’s right to fight injustice and will latch on the their human failings so we don’t have to pay attention to the larger issues (see: Al Gore has a big house therefore climate change is bunk).
Cheers to Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks. And to all of those thousands of citizens who participated in one of the greatest acts of boycotting in the history of the country.
Maude
@Violet:
There was an estimate done on how much it would cost to do a low budget trip to attentd the SB. Comes in at just under $6,000.
Sports have become rich people’s games.
Violet
@Maude:
I guess it depends where you live. If you live close enough to drive, stay at a budget motel and eat a cheap restaurants then your main cost is tickets. I don’t know how much those cost but it isn’t $6,000. I guess it also depends if you’re going just for the weekend or for the entire week.
stuckinred
@Maude: “Have become”? Welcome to earth.
LGRooney
@HeartlandLiberal: Sounds like a museum/ venue steeped in reality rather than some hero worship. Your description reminds of the stark difference between the WWII museums/memorials in Eastern Europe v. what we have here. Here, we worship the sacrifice of heroes and bask in the glory of what our men and women did overseas to defend freedom. There, since the fighting was on their doorsteps, or closer, it is more sad reminder than anything else of the disgustingly brutal nature of war and of the fact that civilians are always, always further brutalized by war than those trained to fight. Something we don’t understand here because we have no living memory of war happening in or around our homes.
We suck our thumbs about Pearl Harbor or 9/11 but that was child’s play compared to what happens daily in a real war. Hell, the last time we had a war on our home front was when the treasonous idjits decided they didn’t like America and its Constitutional processes any longer and, in truth, only they felt what modern war means, thanks to Sherman (as most fighting took place between troops on battlefields rather than house-to-house and there were no bombs falling somewhat randomly on their heads). So, even then, it wasn’t happening in the USA.
TOP123
At the Henry Ford Museum? This is the “Dearborn Independent” Henry Ford we’re talking about, right?
ETA: I see Citizen_X @ 20 was there ahead of me…
Brachiator
@Violet:
Food costs will probably still be reasonable and may be the easiest costs to control, but I wonder how many motels (if you can find a room) will raise their rates. Living close enough to drive is fine, but parking at or near the SB will cost bigbucks.
I know a couple of people who are going to the big game. The husband is a BIG sports nut, and the tickets are a huge treat for him. They are trying to be relatively frugal, and will be taken to the game via some chartered bus. By the way, some relatives in the area tell me various bus companies will probably do very well (and were not being excessively greedy, at least at first glance).
For everyone in the area, I do worry a bit about the roads and highways, which can get treacherously icy. Hopefully folks there will be safe and have a good time.
geg6
@Violet:
There are tons of people from Pittsburgh who aren’t Richie Riches who are going/have gone down to Dallas for the game. I know, literally, dozens of them and none of them are rich. They save up throughout the football season for this or they spend the summer vacation fund on it. Since so many flights are canceled, they are driving. Unlike Texans, Western Pennsylvanians and Wisconsinites know how to drive in the snow and ice. From what I’ve seen, you have several inches of snow on top of the ice that never melted. Ice can be a bitch, but the snow provides traction and it’s pretty easy to drive on if you know what you are doing.
Yutsano
@geg6:
That’s kind of the rub right there. The folks from up north know what to do in this stuff, but the citizens of Dallas I’m betting not so much. Remember, when you’re driving, it’s not you, it’s the other idiot.
gwangung
And remember (if the 101st Chairborne doesn’t), that those who ARE trained to fight also get brutalized to a great degree—that it’s inherent in the training to fight. THAT’S what we honor as a sacrifice.
Pangloss
Can’t wait to read the first article alleging that Rosa Parks had granite countertops.
asiangrrlMN
Love this picture. It’s a stark reminder at how mundane heroism can look.
@Nicole: I didn’t know that part of the story. I assume you meant that she was arrested for not giving up her seat? The whole story is just so powerful. I don’t know if I would have had that kind of courage.
quaint irene
Too bad, It would certainly be preferable to all the palaver about Reagan today.
LanceThruster
Seeing the picture of that bus is pretty cool. I’m glad they saved it as a museum piece.
Funny how things change as when we were in school, the prime seats were those in the back of the bus as we were further from the prying eyes of authority.
Another thing that’s always occurred to me was a big what if. When you see the pictures of the kids at Little Rock High School, they clearly worked so hard to blend in with their manner of dress and such. Imagine if instead of the irrational hatred and resistance to integration, they would have just been accepted from the outset as typical Americans looking to become part of the mainstream culture. How would that have changed the current factionalization so complained about by those very people who were against racial integration and ensuring civil liberties in the first place?
gbear
@Yutsano: Well, the biggest lesson this northerner has learned is to not drive on ice. Driving in snow is a breeze compared to ice. The rules of physics do not work in favor of cars on icy roadways.
@Face: I can’t wait to see their reaction the first time a town tries to pull the same move by voting to ignore state laws.
Ruckus
@LGRooney:
In the 70’s I went to a few war or freedom fighter museums in northern europe and they are indeed different. There is no way to get the reality of what that life was like, but one can get a small glimmer of understanding of how bad and dangerous it was.
LanceThruster
@Citizen_X: And yet there’s quite a few of the tribe that drive Benz’s despite their particular role in WWII.
LanceThruster
@HeartlandLiberal: Interesting observations, thank you. I remember seeing movies of the “Mr. Tibbs” type genre and thought how being the wrong person at the wrong place and the wrong time could be quite hazardous to your well-being as so many of these isolated burgs and hollers were essentially fiefdoms, subject to the whims of the prevailing power block.
Think of the movie “Nothing But A Man” where the gas station owner who gave Ivan Dixon a job wanted to be a decent human being but the pressure of the bullies meant taking a stand for someone else would destroy his own standing within the community, particularly when so many others tacitly approved of the views of the segregationists. It’s one thing to battle for your own rights, but to potentially sacrifice everything when you had little to gain personally and all else to lose is a tough decision for anyone, yet many chose to do the right thing regardless.
Compare and contrast the “Good Germans” with the “Good Whites” or “Good Southerners”.
LanceThruster
@Nicole: More fascinating info, thank you. Kind of like the Scopes Monkey Trial challenge, I imagine. Staged true, but required to have standing and move the process along.
sneezy
@Violet:
“I don’t know how much [Super Bowl tickets] cost but it isn’t $6,000.”
From CBS News:
“As WBBM Newsradio 780’s Mary Frances Bragiel reports, officials from FanSnap.com reportedly say the average price for a ticket to the Green Bay Packers-Pittsburgh Steelers game is $4,683 – nearly double the price from the last Super Bowl.”
Admittedly, that’s not the face value, but still…