“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.