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Funeral of Rosa Parks

Aired November 02, 2005 - 13:35   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And now it is Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, speaking at the funeral of Rosa Parks. We heard from her husband earlier in the funeral, the former president, Bill Clinton. And as we listen in and watch the coverage from Detroit, Michigan, it looks like Mrs. Clinton is wrapping up her remarks. I want to welcome in our guest, Ambassador Andy Young, who has been with me many, many more hours than he ever planned to, but we appreciate him sticking with us.
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We're not letting him go.

KAGAN: Could be a struggle here.

HARRIS: That's my job, right?

KAGAN: Also, historian Douglas Brinkley is joining us from New York City.

Tony, I'll let you get a question in here.

HARRIS: Well, Douglas, I was -- and, ambassador, I'm wondering, I'm looking at the service today and, you know, it's such a -- she's such a bigger-than-life figure. And I was asking you just a moment ago, I mean, how tall a woman, I mean, how big a woman? Because the stature of the woman that she has seemed to take on over the years, you would think she is just this gigantic figure.

ANDREW YOUNG, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: No, she was almost helpless. She was 5'2", or 3", 110 pounds at most and never talked above a whisper. You had to lean to listen to hear what she had to say. But people listened, because she had something to say.

HARRIS: And, Douglas, I want to bring you in and ask you what your thoughts are on this day and what you've noticed, taken note of, as you've watched the funeral service.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, HISTORIAN: Well, Rosa Parks had an illustrious history, being from Tuskegee, where she was born in Alabama, which was the homebase of Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver. But I think the key to her life was her religion, her Christianity. In her last years, when I spent time interviewing her for my book, she always had a Bible, but she had to have the big print; her eyes were bad. And even when her health was bad, she would go to St. Matthews AME Church in Detroit. This whole day is in Detroit, and we always associate Mrs. Parks with Montgomery. But she was under death threats in 1957 and moved to Detroit. And, yes, she was an international celebrity. Everybody knew the name Rosa Parks. But from '57 to '64, she worked at a little towel factory called Stockton Towels where she would make dish rags and then take a bus home. She was a blue collar, working-class woman. Ambassador Young is very right, she was demure, quiet, and had no ego. She was complete holy spirit. You know, most famous people have a lot of ego going on. Mrs. Parks had none.

KAGAN: Well, Ambassador, if you could chime in and pick up on that point as a man of faith yourself, how Rosa Parks' faith played into her life, and her work and her acts.

YOUNG: Well, Dr. King used to say that in order to do these kind of things, you can't be afraid of death. And one's religious commitment is one of the things that helps you to deal with the threat of death and the fear of death. He would say if you haven't found something you're willing to die for, you're not fit to live. And, of course, there were people being killed for doing what Rosa Parks did. Claudette Colvin had been beaten a few months before. And almost -- it took her to almost adulthood to recover from the humiliation, because the community...

(CROSSTALK)

HARRIS: There's Claudette right there, yes, there's a picture of her.

YOUNG: The community didn't rally around her. The thing about Rosa Parks was she had such an impeccable character...

HARRIS: Yes.

YOUNG: That nobody could say that Rosa Parks was a hoax.

HARRIS: And, Douglas, I wonder, we were just talking about the stature that she's taken on over the years, did it ever become heavy? Did it ever become burdensome on her?

BRINKLEY: Well, very much so. And, you know, fame with no money in America is not always an easy ticket. She was a grassroots organizer. She -- way before December 1, '55, she was involved as a secretary to the NAACP, working with Mr. E.B. Nixon. She was somebody who protested, brought student to Montgomery Library, African-American students, said black children deserve the same books as white children. But she was always willing to take this in a way -- a secondary role.

In Montgomery, I asked her when she first met Martin Luther King, she was 42, and Dr. King was, I believe 26, maybe 27 at the time, and she saw him at a little basement in an insurance company in Montgomery. And I asked, Mrs. Parks, what did you think? Could you tell this young king was going to be a great orator? And she said oh, no, no, no, I just -- all I thought was, boy, was he cute. I mean, he was a really cute man. And that was kind of way I think she was. She never took herself too seriously, never lied to herself. And then when Dr. King died, she loved Martin Luther King. And when he died in '68, she was in Detroit, and she didn't know what to do. She just cried and cried and went and played Sam Cooke on her phonograph, with "A Long Time's Gonna Come" over and over again. Eventually made her way to Atlanta.

And the only other thing I want to say is that Raymond Parks, her husband, was the key person in her life. He allowed -- he was a spouse who stayed home, he took care of Rosa's mother. Raymond would -- you know, Rosa Parks would go do NAACP fundraisers and travel the country and Raymond would take care of the homefront. And that was unusual for a man in the '50s and '60s to do.

And, of course, she's going to be buried in Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery, right next to Raymond Parks. And the institute that lives on, it's the Rosa and Raymond Parks' Institute. So he was a crucial support system in her life.

HARRIS: Andy?

YOUNG: Yes, no, that's very good. And, you know, I never knew Raymond Parks. I knew that he was active in the NAACP in the early days. But I never knew quite what happened to him. I never met him.

BRINKLEY: He was -- when the bus boycott occurred and they were getting death threats, he didn't want Rosa Parks to take this to the Supreme Court. He said, Rosa, they're going to kill you, meaning the white bigots. They're going to kill you, we can't do it.

No, he had been an activist. He led the legal defense fund to free the Scottsboro boys. He was a barber. He cut hair. But the barber shop was a meeting place often in Montgomery. He eventually let her do it, but he had a nervous breakdown, due to all the death threats in Montgomery, and had a difficult time dealing with that sort of pressure.

We've got to remember when those 50,000 African-Americans were walking -- and whites -- in Montgomery, refusing to ride the buses for over a year, that the Parks, Rosa and Raymond, were under constant death threats. They couldn't answer their phone. They were afraid to walk out. A Lutheran church be across the street blew up at them. There was a lot of violence going on here. And part of the bravery of Rosa Parks wasn't just not giving up the seat, but it was taking it all the way to the courts, through the court system.

KAGAN: Doug, I'd like you to pick up on something that the ambassador was talking about earlier today, and that is the character and the role that Montgomery played 50 years ago. That there was a reason that this took place -- because there were certainly were protests, bus protests, taking place in other communities -- why this was the place that it took hold.

BRINKLEY: Well in 1953, there was a Baton Rouge bus boycott. And it almost worked, but it didn't. The difference between years, by 1954, you had Brown Versus Topeka and it overturned Plessy Versus Ferguson. And there was no more separate but equal. And so Rosa Parks was one of a group of activists that started saying now we've got to implement Brown.

And I heard Ambassador Young earlier rightfully mention that she, then -- a big moment for her was she went to the Highlander Folks School in Tennessee over the summer of '55. And I went to Wayne State University, writing my book, and looked at her papers and found her notes that she kept in her civil disobedience class at Highlander.

She came back to Montgomery in September of '55 and she was sickened by the death and murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy who went down to Money, Mississippi, ostensibly wolf-whistled at a woman. And they tied a -- gouged his eyes, killed him and threw him in the Tallahatchie River. And his picture was shown in the magazines, in "Jet" magazine. Rosa parks could not believe.

And so she was a pot simmering. She was boiling. But she didn't wake up December 1, saying this is my day of civil disobedience. But she was ready to act, because she had had enough. She had endured enough pain in Jim Crow America.

KAGAN: But as you were pointing out, Ambassador Young, perhaps simmering, perhaps angry, perhaps ready, yet still peaceful and nonviolent and quiet.

YOUNG: And, again, she said, in talking with her -- she said that this was another day that this bus driver normally would pass her by. But because there was a crowd, he didn't see her in the crowd. And everybody else in the crowd got on, put their money in, then got off and went to the back of the bus. She put her money in and went back and sat down, as she always did. And it was -- so the bus driver probably deserves some credit for provoking this.

KAGAN: His role, as well. Did you see this piece earlier that we ran?

HARRIS: I did, I did.

KAGAN: About the kindergartner here in Atlanta?

HARRIS: Set it up for us. Because I saw it in the middle of the piece, but set it us up for.

KAGAN: Well, Ambassador Young was here when we were watching it earlier. It comes from our affiliate WXIA. Donna Lowry is there education reporter. Went to a local kindergarten classroom and this kindergarten teacher asked her students do you know who Rosa Parks was? And she was surprised by their answer, so she came up with a skit. And these darling children now re-enact the skit that re-enacts the acts that took place on that bus almost 50 years ago. So let's take a look at this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. Are you ready?

DONNA LOWRY, REPORTER, WXIA (voice-over): As with any actors, they get in character. In this case, 1955 Montgomery, Alabama. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This lady won't get up!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. I need you to give me some more energy.

LOWRY: Teacher Tyree Thornton directs these kindergartners through their scenes. They've read the Rosa Parks story in their class at Randolph Elementary. Now it's time for action.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Black people were not allowed to sit in the front seat of buses.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me have the seat.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Then one day a lady named Rosa Parks had enough.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm tired and my feet hurt. Why do you treat black people like this?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She won't give up her seat.

LOWRY: The teacher decided on the skit after Rosa Parks died. And most of the children didn't know about her.

TYREE THORNTON, TEACHER: I think one child raised his hand and said, "Rosa Parks was Martin Luther King's friend."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'll just have to call the police on you.

LOWRY: It's not easy getting five and six-year-olds to focus, but then again, this sometime happens to veteran actors, too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why didn't you give up -- why didn't you give up this seat when they told you to?

LOWRY: Through the stops and starts, the jail visit and fingerprinting, Dr. King's declaration...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are gathered here today because of an injustice.

LOWRY: ... and the actual boycott and picketing, these pint-size actors come to their own conclusions on why they should remember Ms. Parks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because we love her.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You can sit wherever you want to since Rosa Parks helped us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to have to take you to jail.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mrs. Rosa Parks was a hero! UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mrs. Rosa Parks was a hero!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mrs. Rosa Parks was a hero!

LOWRY: They now know.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: Oh, that is adorable. That is absolutely adorable. Well, this is one of the people that you want to hear speak on the subject.

YOUNG: Conyers -- John Conyers was a Congressman who invited Rosa Parks to join his staff, and gave her a job in Detroit. That's how she got to Detroit.

KAGAN: Let's listen in.

REP. JOHN CONYERS, MICHIGAN: ... get Rosa Parks, the honor that she received.

(APPLAUSE)

CONYERS: We didn't know if we could get airplanes. We went to the speaker's office and they put us in touch with the Pentagon. And after we got a plane, we realized we needed two. And here we have so many people out here. And I just wanted all of my colleagues in the Congress to know that the power you feel in this church today is part of the power that she left when she walked on this Earth and lived in Detroit for year after year after year.

APPLAUSE)

CONYERS: ... working in my office. Can you imagine coming to work and you have Rosa Parks sitting in your office? We -- I went through some adjustment. I mean, this was a celebrity staffer, folks, if there ever was one. And we got along so well, because she had that Mother Teresa-like aura that brought peace and harmony.

I've never heard her in an argument in my life. I've never heard her raise her voice in my life. I've never heard her speak in angry tones or negatively about anybody. It wasn't in her. And that's why, somehow, the world, the country, and particularly, we, the beneficiaries, have been so inspired and thrilled by the reception and the home going that Rosa Parks has received in going to heaven.

Now, this struggle for justice that we've been talking about in such restricted terms, about her experience, now is much wider. We're talking about a civil rights movement that has morphed to a human rights movement. We're talking about the rights of women, of children, of human beings all over the world. And so we were disturbed when we saw how Hurricane Katrina and Rita made us remember how deep poverty and race have brought hardships, still, in America, even though we thought we had come so far.

We know now that what we're doing today in the Congress is having hearings on the Voter Rights Act of 1965. We're still trying to figure out how to get people to do what it took her so long to do. Guess what? There are millions of people not voting who ought to be voting.

(APPLAUSE)

Some of them are being prevented or discouraged from voting. There are new ways now, or you can change district lines and get all kinds of results. But there's some people voting because they've given up. There's some people voting because they don't take this message that we have learned from Rosa here today, that you keep on keeping on.

And so I just want you to remember that today there is a race in the world, testing whether our Democratic destiny can triumph over our imperial destiny, whether we are really going to be the leaders of freedom and justice in the world, or we're just going to take out whoever we want and do what we want anywhere in the world, because we're the most powerful.

You know, that goes back to Rosa Parks, too, doesn't it? And so I am so proud to have had her come our way, to come to Detroit.

And I just can remember only this. When Nelson Mandela, after 27 years imprisonment, came back to lead his country, and he came to Detroit, and when he found out that Rosa Parks had come out to meet him, some of you were there -- he started this chant. "Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks." That was Nelson Mandela who Rosa Parks had come out to pay tribute to. The first thing he did was pay tribute to Rosa Parks when they came to Detroit. Isn't that...

(APPLAUSE)

Mandela. Rosa parks. And the person she gave us -- the leadership mantle to, Martin Luther King.

And so, my brothers and sisters, I just want you to know, we've got a tremendous legacy to fulfill. And here's what it is -- we've got to realize that you can't maintain a democracy and an empire simultaneously.

(APPLAUSE)

Rosa, you taught me that. And I'm happy and proud to stand here with all of you today. Thank you. God bless you.

HARRIS: Congressman Conyers, John Conyers, remembering his former employee, former staffer. That's odd to say, isn't it? Rosa Parks. We will take you back to Greater Grace Temple in just a couple of minutes, but first a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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