The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (58 page)

248
. McCauley, author interview.

249
. Jervis Anderson,
Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen
(New York: Harper Collins, 1997), 258.

250
. Jackson,
From Civil Rights to Human Rights
, 182.

251
. Faith Holsaert et al.,
Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 287–88.

252
. Charles Euchner,
Nobody Turn Me Around: A People’s History of the 1963 March on Washington
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), 156–57.

253
. Davis Houck and David Dixon,
Women and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1965
(Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2009), x.

254
. Holsaert et al.,
Hands on the Freedom Plow
, 289.

255
. Houck,
Women and the Civil Rights Movement
, x.

256
. Mabel Williams, author phone interview, July 26, 2010.

257
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 185–86. In 1965, Pauli Murray noted that Parks’s act “symbolizes both inclusiveness and continuity, for she has demonstrated that moral courage and militant leadership are not the exclusive properties of any age-group or either sex” (“Tribute to Rosa Parks,” PMP).

258
. “The World of Coretta King: A Word with Trina Grillo,”
New Lady
, Folder 1-6, RPP. John Conyers attests to how solicitous Coretta Scott King was of Parks’s needs (author interview).

259
. In a 1966 letter to another friend, Horton explained that he “couldn’t get the kind of cooperation I need in raising funds for Rosa Parks. I had hoped to get the use of King’s name, but he was either too busy or uninterested to reply.” Horton to Sackheim, May 7, 1956, Box 22, Folder 22, HP.

260
. 1964 WPAC newsletter, Folder 4-16, Box 4, RPP.

261
. Ibid.

262
. Robbie L. McCoy, “A Grand Night for Rosa,”
Michigan Chronicle
, April 10, 1965.

263
. Ibid.

264
. Paul Lee, compiler, “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Michigan, 1945-68: An Illustrated Timeline,”
Michigan Citizen
, 2010.

265
. Houck,
Women and the Civil Rights Movement
, 108, 113.

266
. Williams, author phone interview.

267
. Conyers, author interview.

1
. David M. Lewis-Colman,
Race against Liberalism: Black Workers and the UAW in Detroit
(Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 42. I am grateful to David Goldberg for his feedback that improved this chapter.

2
. Ibid., 42–45.

3
. General Baker, author interview, October 21, 2009.

4
. Ibid. Eight years later, Reuther’s wariness of this movement had shifted, and he joined King and Parks at the front of Detroit’s Great March and on the dais at the March on Washington in D.C. These 1963 appearances have burnished the historical memory of Reuther and covered up his longer history on racial issues.

5
. Arthur Johnson,
Race and Remembrance: A Memoir
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), 49.

6
. David Goode,
Orvie, the Dictator of Dearborn
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989).

7
. Thomas Sugrue,
The
Origins of the Urban Crisis
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).

8
. Elaine Latzman Moon,
Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes: An Oral History of Detroit’s African America Community, 1918–1967
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), 264. Autoworkers led sit-ins in Detroit in the 1940s and 1950s to dramatize the refusal of these restaurants, cafes, and bars to serve black patrons.

9
. Arthur W. Boddie, oral history, Kellogg African American Health Care Project, University of Michigan,
http://www.med.umich.edu/
.

10
. Johnson,
Race and Remembrance
, 49.

11
. Notes from a WCC meeting, Box 4, Folder 1, VP.

12
. Beth Bates, “‘Double V for Victory’ Mobilizes Black Detroit, 1941–1946,” in Theoharis,
Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside of the South, 1940-1980
, Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard, eds. (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 33.

13
. “Rosa Parks Seized for Walking, Too,”
New York
Amsterdam News
, November 24, 1956.

14
. Parks, interview by John H. Britton, September 28, 1967, CRDP, 28; Gregory Skwira, “The Rosa Parks Story: A Bus Ride, a Boycott, a New Beginning,” in
Blacks in Detroit: A Reprint of Articles from the Detroit Free Press
, Scott McGehee and Susan Watson, eds. (Detroit: Detroit Free Press, 1980).

15
. Moon,
Untold Tales
, 380.

16
. Douglas Brinkley,
Rosa Parks: A Life
(New York: Penguin, 2000), 67.

17
. Parks, CRDP, 26.

18
. Rosa Parks, interview, August 22–23, 1978, BWOHP, 565.

19
. Not until passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act did Detroit hospitals stop discriminatory practices regarding black doctors and black patients. Johnson,
Race and Remembrance
, 55.

20
. Earl Selby and Miriam Selby,
Odyssey: Journey through Black America
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971), 66.

21
. Joseph Crespino and Matthew Lassiter, eds.,
The
Myth of Southern Exceptionalism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 26–28.

22
. Roxanne Brown, “Mother of the Movement: Nation Honors Rosa Parks with Birthday Observance,”
Ebony
, February 1988.

23
. Carolyn Green, author phone interview, May 29, 2012; Rhea McCauley, author phone interview, May 14, 2012.

24
. “‘I’d Do It Again,’ Says Rights Action Initiator,”
Los Angeles Times
, December 16, 1965.

25
. For further expansion of this argument, see Crespino,
The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism
.

26
. Selby,
Odyssey
, 66.

27
. Sugrue,
Origins of the Urban Crisis
, 33.

28
. Hasan Jeffries,
Bloody Lowndes
(New York: New York University Press, 2009), 30.

29
. Scott McGehee and Susan Watson,
Blacks in Detroit: A Reprint of Articles from the Detroit Free Press
(Detroit: Detroit Free Press, 1980), 10.

30
. Todd Shaw,
Now Is the Time! Detroit Black Politics and Grassroots Activism
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 42.

31
. Sugrue,
Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North
(New York: Knopf, 2008), 258.

32
. Johnson,
Race and Remembrance
, 43.

33
. Ibid., 45.

34
. David Goldberg, “From Landless to Landlords: Black Power, Black Capitalism, and the Co-optation of Detroit’s Tenants’ Rights Movement, 1964–1969,” in
The Business of Black Power: Community Development, Capitalism, and Corporate Responsibility in Postwar America
, Laura Warren Hill and Julia Rabig, eds. (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012 ); Shaw,
Now Is the Time
, 47.

35
. Angela Dillard,
Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 260.

36
. Suzanne Smith,
Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 35.

37
. See David Goldberg and Trevor Griffey,
Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action, and the Construction Trade
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010
)
.

38
. Sugrue,
Origins of the Urban Crisis
, 33.

39
. Sidney Fine,
Violence in the Model City
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), 57.

40
. Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin,
Detroit: I Do Mind Dying
(Cambridge, MA: South End, 1998), 23–24.

41
. Alex Poinsett, “School Segregation Up North,”
Ebony
, June 1962.

42
. Moon,
Untold Tales
, 341.

43
. Dillard,
Faith in the City
, 287.

44
. Ibid.

45
. “Detroiters Poised for Bias March,”
Detroit News
, June 23, 1963.

46
. Dillard,
Faith in the City
, 268.

47
. Sugrue,
Sweet Land of Liberty
, 299.

48
. General Baker, author interview, October 21, 2009.

49
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 184.

50
. Full text of King’s “Speech at the Great March on Detroit” found at “Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Global Freedom Struggle,” Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, Stanford University,
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/
.

51
. “She Started the Revolt,”
Michigan Chronicle
, June 29, 1963.

52
. Moon,
Untold Tales
, 336.

53
. Johnson,
Race and Remembrance
, 63–64.

54
. Membership Records, Box III: C-64 and C65, NAACP.

55
. Norman Noonan, author interview, December 21, 2010.

56
. Membership Records, Box III: C-64, Folder 4, NAACP.

57
. James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown,”
Esquire
(July 1960).

58
. “Statement of the Detroit Branch NAACP on the Mayor’s Committee on Police-Community Relations” August 14, 1958, Box III: C-64, Folder 6, NAACP.

59
. ”Summary Statement”, December 14-15, 1960, Box III: C65, Folder 5, NAACP.

60
. Johnson,
Race and Remembrance
, 57.

61
. Smith,
Dancing in the Street
, 52; Grace Lee Boggs,
Living for Change: An Autobiography
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 126.

62
. Fine,
Violence in the Model City
, 106.

63
. Dillard,
Faith in the City
, 267–68.

64
. “Police Gulf Grows,”
Freedom Now!
October 14, 1964.

65
. Fine,
Violence in the Model City
, 134.

66
. See notes on Parks’s speech to the Alabama Club, Folder 1–5, RPP.

67
. Nancy Milio,
9226 Kercheval: The Storefront that Did Not Burn
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1971), 105.

68
. Angela D. Dillard, “Religion and Radicalism: The Reverend Albert B. Cleage, Jr., and the Rise of Black Christian Nationalism in Detroit,” in
Freedom North
, 158–59.

69
. As quoted in Dillard,
Faith in the City
, 253.

70
. Dillard,
Faith in the City
, 257;
Freedom Now!
newsletter, Folder 2–8, RPP.

71
. Some back issues can be found in RPP.

72
. Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed,
Quiet Strength
:
The Faith, the Hope, and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), 57.

73
. Alfonzo Hunter, author interview, March 22, 2012.

74
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 190–91. In 1974, Parks was honored at the AME’s quadrennial convention, together with Myrlie Evers and Beah Richards.

75
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 189–91.

76
. Martha Norman Noonan, author phone interview, December 21, 2010.

77
. Dillard,
Freedom North
, 162.

78
. Nathan Hare, author phone interview, February 17, 2012.

79
. Herb Boyd, author interview, June 11, 2011.

80
. Dillard,
Faith in the City
, 273.

81
. Ibid.

82
. The UAW initially opposed the redistricting.

83
. Nedzi’s district became the Fourteenth District, so the race for the new First District became an open one.

84
. This is now Michigan’s Fourteenth Congressional District. In 1992, Michigan lost two congressional seats and district lines were again redrawn.

85
. It’s not clear when Parks and Conyers first met. Conyers said that he met Parks while working with King on voting rights, before she was boycotted out of Alabama. This seems unlikely as Conyers was in the army until 1957. Conyers went to Birmingham in 1963 to do voting rights work with the National Lawyers Guild, his first trip there—though there is no documentation that Parks was in Birmingham for that trip.

86
. John Conyers, author interview, March 11, 2011.

87
. Ibid.

88
. Ibid.

89
. As quoted in Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 187.

90
. “Congressman John Conyers to Receive 92nd Spingarn Award,”
Crisis
, July/August 2007, 46.

91
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 187.

92
. Conyers, author interview.

93
. Dudley Buffa,
Union Power and American Democracy: The UAW and the Democratic Party, 1935–72
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), 149.

94
. For further discussion, see James Geschwinder,
Class, Race and Worker Insurgency: The League of Revolutionary Black Workers
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

95
. “Rep. Conyers, Mich. Solon, Speaks Here,”
Los Angeles Sentinel
, March 11, 1965.