“Dangerous memories” is a phrase often used by German Catholic theologian Johann Metz. Metz argues that certain memories are subversive of the status quo, and therefore dangerous to the powers that be. For example, the Israelites, enslaved in Egypt, remembered their ancestors and that there had been a time when they were free. In their telling of history, they were enslaved when there arose a Pharaoh “who knew not Joseph”. The Egyptian rulers had forgotten who the Israelites were. However, through generations of slavery, the Israelites remembered who they were, that they had been a free people. That collective memory (even though dormant for generations) is a dangerous one—for Pharaoh.
Rosa Parks’ story is full of “dangerous memories”. Here’s the first one she tells, beginning on p. 2 of “Rosa Parks: My Story”:
“One of my earliest memories of childhood is hearing my family talk about the remarkable time that a white man treated me like a regular little girl, not a little black girl. It was right after World War I, around 1919. I was five or six years old. Moses Hudson, the owner of the plantation next to our land in Pine Level, Alabama, came out from the city of Montgomery to visit and stopped by the house. Moses Hudson had his son-in-law with him, a soldier from the North They stopped in to visit my family. We southerners called all northerners Yankees in those days. The Yankee soldier patted me on the head and said I was such a cute little girl. Later that evening my family talked about how the Yankee soldier had treated me like I was just another little girl, not a little black girl. In those days in the South white people didn’t treat little black children the same as little white children. And old Mose Hudson was very uncomfortable about the way the Yankee soldier treated me. Grandfather said he saw old Mose Hudson’s face turn red as a coal of fire. Grandfather laughed and laughed.”
Just in case it’s not clear to the reader what this story has to do with Mrs. Parks’ arrest in December 1955, she explains: “There had been a few times in my life when I had been treated by white people like a regular person, so I knew what that felt like. It was time that other white people started treating me that way.”
Now, when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat, was this the first story in her mind? Probably not. But late in life, when she sat down to tell her story, this is where she started. As she “looked back over her life, and thought things over”, there was a direct connection between the memory of how “the Yankee soldier” treated her (and how enraged Mose Hudson was, and how gleeful her grandfather was!) and her ability to take the actions that initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
This story is particularly interesting to me. When I was in the first grade, in 1959 southern Georgia, and just starting to learn to read and write, I went to a friend’s house to play and took up a blackboard to show off my new skills. I tried to write a sentence with the word "air" in it, but I didn’t know how to spell it. The only adult in the house was the black maid of my friend’s family. So I asked her how to spell "air."
I remember distinctly that she was ironing sheets at the time — white sheets, ironically (all sheets were white and flat back in those prehistoric days) — I remember it because we didn’t iron sheets at my house (but then, we didn’t have a maid).
Anyway, I went up to this woman and asked her, "how do you spell ‘air’?" I didn’t think anything of it, I had asked such questions of all the adults in my life and been given unremarkable but satisfactory answers. But this woman paused and looked at me with a look I can’t describe, I think it must have contained both shame and anger, and said, "I don’t know how."
Although I had never consciously considered the racist culture around me before, in that look and statement, I was stunned into an awareness of it. I knew without a second’s thought that the reason she didn’t know was that she didn’t know as much reading and writing as I knew halfway through the first grade, and I knew the reason for that was because of the color of her skin.
I don’t remember a lot of my childhood, which was not a very good one, but I have always remembered this incident. I’ve been a activist for peace and social justice practically all my adult life, and I see that moment as the start of that process. So I know exactly what Rosa Parks is talking about here. Sometimes it only takes a second for your whole life to be set in motion.
By the way, massappeal, there is a play (and film starring Jack Lemon) called Mass Appeal you may want to check out.
Peacearena, thanks for that powerful memory. The late, great Molly Ivins remembered asking why she couldn’t drink from the “Colored” water fountain, and being told it was because it was dirty. She said it was obvious to any 5 year old that the Colored water fountain was cleaner than the White water fountain. From that point forward she learned to distrust what her elders taught her about race relations.