It startles me that Alito’s day of nomination and day of confirmation intersect now twice with the triumphant legacy of King and Rosa Parks — and, unheralded, the very Warren Court that Alito has decried for its activism.
Coretta and Martin King’s home was firebombed at the start of the bus boycott that Parks and King launched. Parks and MLK worked together, you remember, in Montgomery to stop the practice of separate rows on buses for black and white riders. GW Bush acknowledged MLK and Parks together on the birthday of MLK 2 weeks ago.
Bush picked the same day Rosa Parks’ body was brought to lie in state at the Capitol to nominate and laud Sam Alito to be the next S.Court justice. Alito dutifully paid a visit to the rotunda to show respect for Rosa Parks. What neither man said in their remarks that day makes a stunning sin of omission:
| Rosa Parks’ struggle bore its fruit on the day, a full year after her arrest, that the “activist” Warren Court decided Browder v. Gayle and ordered an end to separate seats on buses, in the winter of 1956. |
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Bill Frist (R-TN) with |
Follow the flip. This is cross-posted at dailykos.
| “It was a moment in history when the woman and the hour were met.” – These were remarks of Coretta King acknowledging Parks. The words resonate again today on her own passing. |
On MLK Day, President Bush said that Coretta King’s husband Martin and Rosa Parks both “roused a dozing conscience of a complacent nation.”
We praise the unflagging dedication of Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King. Bush and Sam Alito hailed the steadfastness of Rosa Parks.
But would a Justice Samuel Alito have ruled in their favor in 1956?
A little more about the events of that time, 1955-1956, in Alabama –
First, Martin Luther King Jr launched a resistance movement from his church when he pushed the residents of Montgomery to boycott the city bus system in defiance of Rosa Parks’ arrest and her court appearance Dec. 5, 1955. 8 weeks later, an angry mob firebombed Dr. and Mrs. King’s home on January 30.
Separate seat ordinances for white and “colored” in Alabama ended when the “activist” Warren Court (yes, that’s the Court that Alito has disparaged) ruled that they had to end. That was 382 days after Rosa Parks’ arrest.
December 20, 1956.
You see, the Supreme Court had the backs of Rosa Parks, the Kings, and the oppressed citizens of Montgomery. It is this unspoken bit of history that gets under my skin when I hear the staged tributes by the White House to the Kings and other heroes of the civil rights movement.
Would a Judge Alito have upended “states rights” the way the Warren Court did? Would a Judge John Roberts for that matter? Do these homages amount to anything more than political stagecraft?
If you look at the the history of the 1950s, you’ll see the challenges by King’s Montgomery Improvement Association (King was president of the MIA), Rosa Parks and 4 other women who were removed from Montgomery’s buses propelled a yearlong rancorous legal battle that wound its way to the US Supreme Court.
The federal case was Browder v. Gayle, named for plaintiff and Montgomery rider Aurelia Browder and for the defendant, Montgomery’s mayor WA Gayle. (Rosa Parks was in the state, not federal, court system.) In the federal case, Rosa’s arrest record and her fingerprints record were used as buttressing evidence.
As the boycott continued the white community fought back with terrorism and harassment. The car-pool drivers were arrested for picking up hitchhikers. African-Americans waiting on street corners for a ride were arrested for loitering.
On January 30, 1956 Dr. King’s home was bombed. His wife and their baby daughter escaped without injury. When Dr. King arrived home he found an angry mob waiting. . . .The boycott continued for over a year. It eventually took the United States Supreme Court to end the boycott. On November 13, 1956 the Court declared that Alabama’s state and local laws requiring segregation on buses were illegal.
Federal injunctions to enforce the Supreme Court order were served on the city and bus company on December 20.
The first activist court to rule Montgomery’s segregation code was unlawful was a US district court in June ’56.
In November the US Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision to strike down the Montgomery law because it deprived “Negro citizens” of 14th amendment equal protection and due process.
“The boycott lasted 381 days . . . .
“On Nov. 13, 1956, in the case of Browder vs. Gayle, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregation on the city’s buses. The court order arrived in Montgomery on Dec. 20; the boycott ended the next day.”
In my view —
| Coretta King’s husband and Rosa Parks did not themselves end bus segregation; they took a stand and organized and motivated a citizen’s bus boycott. The Supreme Court put a stop to it when it struck down the law.
An activist court bucked the local legislators and the majority citizenry of the state to end segregation. |
| It is so hard to imagine that Bush’s second appointee, Sam Alito, would hold measure up to the best judicial legacy moments of the last 50 years. |
Sigh. Another Anti–anti-discrimination Justice.