Civil Rights Icon Makes More History In Washington

WASHINGTON — Rosa Parks is famous for her 1955 refusal to give up her seat on a city bus in Alabama to a white man, but there’s plenty about the rest of her experiences that she deliberately withheld from her family.

While Parks and her husband, Raymond, were childless, her brother, the late Sylvester McCauley, had 13 children. They decided Parks’ nieces and nephews didn’t need to know the horrible details surrounding her civil rights activism, said Rhea McCauley, Parks’ niece.

“They didn’t talk about the lynchings and the Jim Crow laws,” said McCauley, 61, of Orlando, Fla. “They didn’t talk about that stuff to us kids. Everyone wanted to forget about it and sweep it under the rug.”

Parks’ descendants now have a chance to be first-hand witnesses as their late matriarch makes more history, this time becoming the first black woman to be honored with a full-length statue in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall. The statue of Parks joins a bust of another black woman, abolitionist Sojourner Truth, which sits in the Capitol Visitors Center.

President Barack Obama, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner are among the dignitaries taking part in the unveiling Wednesday. McCauley said more than 50 of Parks’ relatives traveled to Washington for the ceremony.

In a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus in segregated Montgomery, Ala. She was arrested, touching off a bus boycott that stretched over a year.

Jeanne Theoharis, author of the new biography “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks,” said Parks was very much a full-fledged civil rights activist, yet her contributions have not been treated like those of other movement leaders, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Rosa Parks is typically honored as a woman of courage, but that honor focuses on the one act she made on the bus on Dec. 5, 1955,” said Theoharis, a political science professor at Brooklyn College-City University of New York.

“That courage, that night was the product of decades of political work before that and continued … decades after” in Detroit, she said.

Parks died Oct. 24, 2005, at age 92. The U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in her honor on Feb. 4, which would have been her 100th birthday.

Parks was raised by her mother and grandparents who taught her that part of being respected was to demand respect, said Theoharis, who spent six years researching and writing the Parks biography.

She was an educated woman who recalled seeing her grandfather sitting on the porch steps with a gun during the height of white violence against blacks in post-World War I Alabama.

After she married Raymond Parks, she joined him in his work in trying to help nine young black men, ages 12 to 19, who were accused of raping two white women in 1931. The nine were later convicted by an all-white jury in Scottsboro, Ala., part of a long legal odyssey for the so-called Scottsboro Boys.

In the 1940s, Parks joined the NAACP and was elected secretary of its Montgomery, Ala., branch, working with civil rights activist Edgar Nixon to fight barriers to voting for blacks and investigate sexual violence against women, Theoharis said.

Just five months before refusing to give up her seat, Parks attended Highlander Folk School, which trained community organizers on issues of poverty but had begun turning its attention to civil rights.

After the bus boycott, Parks and her husband lost their jobs and were threatened. They left for Detroit, where Parks was an activist against the war in Vietnam and worked on poverty, housing and racial justice issues, Theoharis said.

Theoharis said that while she considers the 9-foot-statue of Parks in the Capitol an “incredible honor” for Parks, “I worry about putting this history in the past when the actual Rosa Parks was working on and calling on us to continue to work on racial injustice.”

Parks has been honored previously in Washington with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999, both during the Clinton administration.

But McCauley said the Statuary Hall honor is different.

“The medal you could take it, put it on a mantel,” McCauley said. “But her being in the hall itself is permanent and children will be able to tour the (Capitol) and look up and see my aunt’s face.”

Loading Slideshow

• February 1

  In this May 3, 1963 file photo,a 17-year-old civil rights demonstrator, defying an anti-parade ordinance of Birmingham, Ala., is attacked by a police dog. Bill Hudson, an Associated Press photographer whose searing images of the civil rights era documented police brutality and galvanized the public, died Thursday, June 24, 2010 in Jacksonville, Fla. He was 77.

• February 2

  1968 Olympic Games, Mexico City, Mexico, Men’s 200 Metres Final, USA gold medalist Tommie Smith (C) and bronze medalist John Carlos give the black power salute as an anti-racial protest as they stand on the podium with Australian silver medallist Peter Norman

• February 3

  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X waiting for an unspecified press conference on March 26, 1964.

• February 4

  Teenager Elizabeth Eckford (L) w. snarling white parents following as she is turned away fr. entering Central High School by Arkansas National Guardsmen under orders fr. Gov. Orval Faubus.

• February 5

  Left to right: George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James M. Nabrit following Supreme Court decision declaring segregation unconstitutional

• February 6

  Rosa Parks, right, is kissed by Coretta Scott King, as she received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Non-violent Peace Prize in Atlanta, Jan. 14, 1980. Parks, who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus nearly 25 years ago, is the first woman to win the award. (AP Photo)

• February 7

  18th November 1968: Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (1900 – 2002) goes backstage to meet the Supremes, Engelbert Humperdinck, Frankie Howerd and Petula Clark after a Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium. The show is in aid of the Variety Artistes’ Benevolent Fund. (Photo by Douglas Miller/Keystone/Getty Images)

• February 8

  US pop star and entertainer Michael Jackson performs with Sammy Davis Junior August 14, 1988 in Monaco. (Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images)

• February 9

  Betty Shabazz at her husband, Malcolm X’s funeral in Hartsdale, New York in 1965.

• February 10

  In this May 25, 1965, file photo, heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali stands over fallen challenger Sonny Liston, after dropping Liston with a short hard right to the jaw in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/John Rooney, File)

• February 11

  TAMPA, FL – JANUARY 27: Whitney Houston sings the National Anthem before a game with the New York Giants taking on the Buffalo Bills prior to Super Bowl XXV at Tampa Stadium on January 27, 1991 in Tampa, Florida. The Giants won 20-19. (Photo by George Rose/Getty Images)

• February 12

  In this January 1, 1945 photo, Lena Horne visits with the Tuskegee Airmen.

• February 13

  In this March 1, 1964, photo, heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, right, is shown with black muslim leader Malcolm X outside the Trans-Lux Newsreel Theater in New York, after viewing the screening of a film about Ali’s title fight with Sonny Liston. (AP Photo/File)

• February 14

  Georgia native son, singer Ray Charles, rocks to the ovation he received from a joint session of the Georgia Legislature in Atlanta, March 7, 1979. The Assembly made his version of the song “Georgia On My Mind” the official state song after he sang it to the session. (AP Photo/Charles Kelly)

• February 15

  John H. Johnson, publisher of Jet and Ebony magazines, left, and actor Bill Cosby, center, join the Rev. Jesse Jackson at a benefit reception for Operation PUSH, in Chicago, Ill., on April 1, 1982. (AP Photo)

• February 16

  American singer Michael Jackson (1958 – 2009) is granted a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Los Angeles, 20th November 1984.

• February 17

  Day of Pilgrimage protest begins on December 5, 1955, with black Montgomery citizens walking to work, part of their boycott of buses in the wake of the Rosa Parks incident. (Photo by Grey Villet//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

• February 18

  In this Aug. 1922 file photo, Marcus Garvey is shown in a military uniform as the “Provisional President of Africa” during a parade on the opening day of the annual Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World at Lenox Avenue in Harlem, New York City. A century ago, Garvey helped spark movements from African nationalist independence to American civil rights to self-sufficiency in black commerce. Jamaican students in every grade from kindergarten through high school have began studying the teachings of the 1920-era black nationalist leader in a new mandatory civics program in schools across this predominantly black country of 2.8 million people. (AP Photo/File)

• February 19

  Los Angeles Lakers’ Wilt Chamberlain, left, stands beside a backboard and hoop trophy that was presented to him after he became the all-time leading rebounder in NBA history, in Los Angeles, Jan. 31, 1972. (AP Photo)

• February 20

  Broadway was a snowstorm canyon as proud Manhattanites feted returned U.S. Olympic stars with a fleecy ticker tape parade in New York on Sept. 3, 1936. The fellow with the broad grin in the foreground is Jesse Owens, who won three gold medals and helped other athletes win another for the U.S. (AP Photo)

• February 21

  Black Nationalist ldr. Malcolm X at podium during rally w. others in bkgrd.

  Malcolm X was later assassinated on February 21, 1965, by members of the Nation of Islam.

• February 22

  At the funeral for slain Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers, his wife, Myrlie Evers (second right), comforts their son, Darryl Kenyatta Evers, while daughter Reena Denise Evers (center, in white dress) wipes her own tears, Jackson, Mississippi, June 15, 1963.

• February 23

  1958: A Caucasian policeman speaks with African-American protesters during a sit-in at Brown’s Basement Luncheonette, Oklahoma.

• February 24

  American actress Hattie McDaniel (1895 – 1952) with her Academy Award of Merit for Outstanding Achievement, circa 1945. McDaniel won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in ‘Gone With The Wind’, making her the first African-American to win an Academy Award.

• February 25

  The First Colored Senator and Representatives, in the 41st and 42nd Congress of the US. Top standing left to right: Robert C. De Large, M.C. of S. Carolina; and Jefferson H. Long, M.C. of Georgia. Seated, left to right: U.S. Senator H.R. Revels of Mississippi; Benj. S. Turner, M.C. of Alabama; Josiah T. Walls, M.C. of Florida; Joseph H. Rainy, M.C. of S. Carolina; and R. Brown Elliot, M.C. of S. Carolina. Lithograph by Currier and Ives, 1872.

• February 26

  Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton (1942 – 1989) (center) smiles as he raises his fist from a podium at the Revolutionary People’s Party Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early September 1970.

Civil Rights Icon Makes More History In Washington