Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005 in Detroit, Michigan at the age of 93. She is revered as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement for sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott by refusing to give her seat to a white man. A young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. was selected to lead the long campaign that led to one of the first great victories in for the Civil Rights Movement in the South.
After her death that year, she was widely celebrated including the then unheard of honor for a woman and private citizen who never held high civil or military office of being laid in state in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol. Tens of thousands filed silently by her flag draped coffin on October 31—Halloween.
I was inspired to write a poem by news coverage of the solemn event. With unwarranted audaciousness, I chose to write in her voice. I had recently listened to some extended interviews and could clearly hear her soft, breathy tone and gentle Southern accent in my head. I knew then, and I know now, that there will be some that take great offense—particularly because I have her voice comments about crime and young men in her troubled Detroit neighborhood. But I had also heard her make similar comments in life.
I have read this work several times and it has appeared in this blog before. But it seems an apt moment to revisit it.
Rosa Parks on Halloween 2005
I didn’t hold truck with Halloween.
I was a good Christian woman.
Ask anyone who ever knew me,
they will tell you so.
Back in Detroit young fools,
with pints and pistols
in their back pockets
burned the neighborhood
each Halloween.
Hell Night they called it
and it was.
Heathen business, I say.
I passed on a few days ago.
Time had whittled me away.
Small as I was to begin with,
I had no weight left
to tie me to the earth.
Now I lay in a box on cold marble.
The empty dome of the Capital
pretends to be heaven above.
A river of faces turns around me,
gawking, weeping, murmuring.
I see them all.
Maybe those old Druids,
pagan though they were,
were right about the air
between the living and the dead
being thin this day.
More likely that Sweet Chariot
has parked somewhere
and let me linger a while
just so I could see this
before swinging low
to carry me home.
It makes me proud alright.
I was always proud.
Humility before the Lord
may be a virtue,
but humility before the master
was the lash that kept
Black folks down.
We grew pride as a back bone.
All of this is nice enough.
But let me tell you,
since I’ve been gone,
I’ve seen some foolishness
and heard plenty, too.
They talk all kinds of foolishness
about that day in Montgomery.
All that falderal about my feet being tired.
It wasn’t my soles that ached.
It was my soul.
It wasn’t any sudden accident either.
No sir, I prayed at the AME church.
I went to the Highland School
for rabble rousers and trouble makers.
I met with the brothers at the NAACP
who were a little afraid
of an uppity woman.
Another thing.
That day was not my whole life.
There were 42 years before
and fifty more after.
There was plenty of loving and grieving,
sweat and laughter,
and always speaking my mind
very plainly, thank you.
Sure, there were parades.
There were medals and speeches, too.
But there were also long lonely days.
Once, up in Detroit,
I was beat half to death
in my own home
by a wild eyed thug.
He didn’t care if I was
the Mother of Civil Rights.
He never heard of Dr. King
or the bus boycott.
All he wanted was my Government money.
so he could go out
and hop himself up some more.
That a young Black man
could do that to an old woman,
any old woman,
near broke my heart.
That I could step out my door
and see copies of him
lolling on every street corner
made me mad.
We may have changed the world,
like they kept saying.
We didn’t change it enough.
We didn’t keep the hope from
being sucked out of the city.
This business in the Capital
is alright, I suppose.
And it was nice enough to be brought
back to Montgomery, too,
laid out in the chapel
of my home church.
But clearly some folks have
gone out of their minds.
Why, in Houston the other day,
before a World Series game,
they had the crowd stand silent
in my memory.
It was a sea of white faces
who paid a seamstress’s
wages for a month for a seat.
It seems the only Black faces
were on the field
or roaming the aisles
selling hot dogs.
And, Lord, the two-faced politicians
that came out of the woodwork!
The governor of Alabama
cried crocodile tears
as if he would not be
happy to have
a White Citizen’s Council
membership card in his wallet
if it would get him some votes.
Somebody roused George W. from his stupor,
told him in short easy words
who I was,
and shoved him out
in front of the microphones
to eulogize me.
He looked uncomfortable and confused.
I understand he had other things
on his mind.
What these politicians had in mind
was patting black folks on the head.
“See,” they say, “Mrs. Parks and Dr. King
took care of everything.
They asked for freedom and we gave it to them
a long, long time ago.
What more can you ask?
Now stand over there out of the way
so we can get down to the business
of going after real money.”
It plain tires me out.
Little children, Black and white,
who study me in school,
do not think the job is over.
Your own bus seat must be won every day.
And while you are at it,
have the driver change the route.
—Patrick Murfin
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