Chapter 7 of Rosa Parks’ story is titled “White Violence Gets Worse”. Among other things it’s a reminder of how ugly the aftermath of wars can be. Mrs. Parks recounts story after story of white brutality and sums it up by writing, “At times I felt overwhelmed by all the violence and hatred, but there was nothing to do but keep on going.”
By this time (late 1940s, early 1950s), Mrs. Parks was both secretary for the Montgomery NAACP chapter, and adviser to the (newly formed) NAACP Youth Council. She mentored young Montgomerians in a campaign to integrate the public libraries. The campaign failed, but helped to develop a new generation of civil rights activists.
Progressives sometimes bemoan the lack of solidarity on the left. It seems there’s always someone who will “betray” their race, class, gender, etc. and side with the powers that be. It’s worth remembering that lack of solidarity is a two-way street. Franklin Roosevelt was called a traitor to his class (and publicly reveled in it). Clifford and Virginia Durr, both native Southerners, were proud traitors to their race.
E.D. Nixon introduced Mrs. Parks and Mrs. Durr to each other. Here’s how Rosa Parks describes it:
“I met her in 1954, and when she found out that I could sew, she hired me to do some work for her…. After that, I sewed anything she needed done. She had an integrated prayer group that I was part of. African-American and Caucasian women would pray together mornings at her house. After a while that was broken up by the husbands and fathers and brothers of the white women. They took out ads in the papers repudiating their women.”
“…When (Clifford and Virginia Durr) talked about returning to Alabama, she had to decide if she wanted to, because she knew she and her husband didn’t have the same attitude about segregation as most white people in Alabama did. In coming back to Alabama after being away for twenty years, she wanted to be part of our efforts to end segregation, even though that meant being ostracized and made to suffer.”
The number of white people in places like Montgomery, Alabama who supported the civil rights movement was vanishingly small in the mid-1950s. It is to the everlasting credit of leaders like Rosa Parks and E.D. Nixon that they did not let the institutionalized hatred with which 90+% of Caucasian people treated African-American Montgomerians stop them from seeking out, finding and using the relationships they built with people like the Durrs who played key roles in the success of the Montgomery bus boycott and other civil rights campaigns.
