Early in this series of blogs about the Civil Rights Movement, I wrote that growing up in a small, rural, all-white Michigan village had inadvertently made me part of what is known as
systemic racism.
That is, I wasn't consciously aware of the issues of modern-day segregation -- because it just wasn't part of the conversation among my family and friends, nor my school teachers.
Later, in 2005, I had two eye-opening experiences.
The first was the dedication of the Civil Rights Memorial, constructed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, in Montgomery, Alabama, on October 23.
Shortly thereafter, on November 2, I attended the funeral of Rosa Parks in Detroit, Michigan.
Because of the high security, no one was allowed to park at the church. Rather, we were bused to the church from the Michigan State Fairgrounds a few miles away.
Here is the story I wrote about that latter experience,
published in
Encore magazine
in
February 2017.
"A White Man at the Back of the Bus"
I rode to Rosa Parks' funeral on the back of a bus -- in the last row, where the ride is bumpiest and the diesel engine loudest. I was the only Caucasian. How appropriate, I thought, considering how our society has evolved in 50 years.
Fifty years ago, I was seven, growing up in an all-white Michigan village, destined to attend a parochial high school of 700 in which only two were African American and a junior college that modeled a similar ethnic disproportion.
"Fifty years ago," Mrs. Dorothy Baker, an elderly black from Alabama, told me, "I would have been shot if you sat down next to me. Not you, but me."
Fifty is exactly the proper number of years for this story.
It was on December 1, 1955, that Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the front of a Montgomery, Ala., bus, an act of courage that gained her the title of Mother of the Modern Civil Rights Movement.
She was buried in Detroit, Mich., after reaching the age of 92, on November 2, 2005.
My ride on a Detroit city bus on that recent November morning was only from the Michigan State Fairgrounds on Eight Mile Road to Greater Grace Temple on Seven Mile, but it was long enough to glimpse a segment of U.S. history that I didn't witness as a boy when "colored only" rest rooms and drinking fountains were the norm in the South, when "Negroes" were beaten and arrested for sitting at "white only" food counters, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was inspiring masses, and when 40 Americans, from the Rev. George Lee in 1955 to Dr. King in 1968, were killed for protesting racial segregation.
I was on the bus to Rosa Parks' funeral for two reasons: one personal and one fortuitous.
Wishing I had been involved in the 1950s and '60s, I traveled to the dedication of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery this past October 23. There, I boarded a beautifully restored bus from the same fleet that had been in service when Rosa was arrested.
I spoke with Warren G. Brown, Sr., who was Dr. King's barber; he told me, "Fifty years ago, it would have been illegal for you to shake my hand."
Cornelius Williams, who had participated in the Montgomery bus boycott, said, "People don't realize they also discriminated against women; all the bus drivers were white males."
And Henriene Clay of Belzoni, Miss., told of George Lee, a black minister in her town who was shot for encouraging his congregation to vote; the murder was never investigated.
Then, when I heard that Rosa Parks had died the next day, on October 24, and was to be buried only two hours from my Kalamazoo home, I decided to go.
That's the personal reason -- to become involved, late because I had not earlier.
The fortuitous reason was my professional association with Pastor Bobette Hampton of the Fresh Fire AME Church, whom I have come to know and admire through writing about her for Encore.
I extended an invitation to her and her husband, John, and she turned that invitation around, asking me to go with them. "Rosa was a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church," Bobette explained, "and a section of seats are reserved for AME ministers."
In addition, Rosa had attended Bobette's ordination.
As Bobette and John's companion, I was given a wristband that allowed me to board the bus from fairgrounds to church.
There, I was permitted to enter, with the ministers, ahead of a line of mourners. Inside, even though I sought a seat in the back, ushers looked at my wristband and directed me to the section, in front, reserved for clergy. I marched along.
The list of political speakers and attendees for the seven-hour ceremony read like a Democratic Party Who's Who, from former president Bill Clinton to Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to the entire Congressional Black Caucus.
The presidents of Detroit's major automakers and the nation's principle black coalitions paid tribute.
Two of the great orators of our time, Rev. Jesse Jackson and AME prelate the Rt. Rev. Philip Cousin, eulogized.
And the music was world class, featuring Motown's own Aretha Franklin.
Members of Rosa's extended family, which numbered about 400, provided anecdotal history, as did women who had been Rosa's colleagues and caretakers.
Rosa
didn't have tired feet, as some historians claim, they said. Rather, she didn't move from her seat on that bus because she was tired of giving in.
Rosa, who was born Rosa McCauley in Tuskegee, Ala. in 1913 and married community activist Raymond Parks in 1932, had joined the NAACP in 1943, a brave act for a Southern woman at a time when members of that organization "disappeared."
Even though she was a high school graduate, she was forced to take a literacy test, three times, and pay an expensive poll tax to vote.
Loving children but birthing none, Rosa became the advisor for Montgomery's NAACP youth group.
She advocated for black victims of rape and black men falsely accused of rape.
And, angered that black children could not enter Montgomery's public libraries, she led an unsuccessful attempt to access books in those buildings.
Her obituary described her as "an ordinary woman who did extraordinary things."
During the funeral, I, one of only two whites in a section that seated 400, stood and sang and applauded and uttered "amen" and felt gratitude for being at this boisterous celebration of life-this "home-going" -- for Rosa Parks.
Holding hands and swaying with the two ministers on either side of me, I joined my voice with theirs as we sang "We Shall Overcome."
Yes, Rosa, we will. When symbols of privilege are no greater than removable wristbands, we will have overcome.
"...we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream" speech
Starting soon, I will begin to write about the adventures that I'm experiencing as my partner, Cyndy Keesler, and I travel the United States in our truck and travel trailer.
And please do check out the Living Legacy Pilgrimage,
