On a Bus Rider

You know this story.

A young Black woman in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, refused to give up her seat on a public bus and was arrested for her refusal. But there’s much more to her story than you may realize.

You see, we sometimes forget that the United States was a racially segregated nation within living memory. I have a memory from when I was about 4 years old of going into the “wrong” restroom at a bus station–I went into the “colored” restroom and was gently escorted out and shown the “mens” room by a nice person inside. Black Americans simply did not enjoy the same rights as White Americans. One significant but overlooked area in which this was true was in where Blacks were allowed to sit on public transportation. The laws in Montgomery, a city only about 4 hours south of where I grew up, said that Black riders could sit anywhere they wished–until the front seats were needed by White citizens. That was the law and it was enforced. So, if the bus were starting to get full, and a White person boarded, Black citizens had to get out of their seats and move to the back of the bus so the White person could sit.

And that’s what this young Black woman was fighting against when she took a stand in March of 1955 and decided she wasn’t going to move, that she had the same right to the seat as any other citizen of Alabama and the United States. The police were called, and she was arrested for violating the law. Well, the truth of the matter is that is what happened, and it’s also not what happened.

You see, the decision to test the law was made by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In order for the unjust law to be challenged, there had to be a court case. And, the way you achieved standing (the right to have a case tried) was to have a reason for being in court in the first place–the issue has to affect that person. And the way a person can show that the law had a negative impact on them was to be arrested and have the case heard. And that’s what happened.

Except this story ends differently that you might think. You see, the young woman who got arrested in March of 1955 for not relinquishing her seat to a White person was not quite what the NAACP was looking for in a sympathetic defendant in court and in the court of public opinion. The attorneys for the group felt strongly that she was wrong for the test case on several counts. First of all, she was single and pregnant at a time when that situation still caused a negative reaction by the public at large. Secondly, she had extremely dark skin, and that was off-putting to many White people. Finally, she was only 15. So, despite the injustice she suffered, Claudette Colvin’s case wasn’t taken up by the NAACP.

It would be 9 months later before a more suitable candidate for the lawsuit, Rosa Parks, would be arrested for the same thing.

On The New Mayor

We all know that the period after the Civil War in the American South is called Reconstruction. The idea for that time was to try to change the racist system of keeping minority Americans from equal justice under the law. Laws in the former Confederate states that had kept former slaves from voting, for instance, were struck down by the federal government, for example. And the result was the election of many African-American candidates to such positions as senator and representative on both the state and federal levels.

And, as we are aware, when the occupying federal troops left the south in 1877, the majority white citizenry of the various states brazenly took away the rights the minority citizens had through such methods as new discriminatory laws (so-called Jim Crow laws) and intimidation (such organizations as the KKK). And, slowly, the elected African-American office=holders were replaced.

I said all of that to speak about the Alabama town of Newbern. In a story that reflects that racist mentality of the Jim Crow era, it seems that Newbern, a majority African-American town of fewer than 300 souls, had elected its first African-American mayor ever. Up until that time, the little burg had been managed and run by the minority white population despite the fact that the town is over 80% African-American. But, it seemed that for the first time, a non-white mayor had been elected despite white attempts to stifle and intimidate the non-white voters.

One of the ways that the white folks in Newbern kept power was to simply not publicize elections. Over the years, the mayor and town council would hold private meetings where they and they alone would decide who would hold the different positions in town. But then, an African-American citizen named Patrick Braxton filed paperwork to run for the office of mayor in Newbern. Since the white power structure never submitted paperwork and never officially entered the race for mayor in the election, Braxton won the race by default as the only candidate to qualify.

It had never dawned on those in power that anyone would dare to run for mayor in an election. They were shocked when, they woke up one morning, and this man who was not “one of them” was now the duly and legally elected mayor of the town. And, in his role and using his power as the new mayor, Braxton appointed a new town council (made up, interestingly, of people from both races). By the way, there had only been one non-white member of the town council before then.

Well, that’s when the old mayor and town council took action. They simply changed the locks on the mayor’s office and on the council chamber room, effectively keeping Braxton and his new council from their work. They told the newspaper that there was a mix-up, that they had simply forgotten to file paperwork for the election, and that they had held a “private” election where (surprise!) they re-elected themselves and the mayor to new terms in office.

Of course, Braxton sued. But guess who controlled the courts in that part of Alabama–and across much of the old Confederacy? As can imagine, Braxton’s efforts produced no change in Newbern…yet.

You see, this didn’t happen over 100 years ago or even 50 years ago. No, Patrick Braxton, the rightful mayor of Newbern, Alabama, was elected in 2020.

On a Powerful Racist

Jim’s legacy remains that of one of America’s most infamous racists. From what historians can piece together from various stories, Jim came from St. Louis, Missouri, and was first received public notice on stages across the country performing blackface “minstrel shows” to the delight of white audiences in the years before the American Civil War.

After the war is when Jim turned to politics and really began his pernicious campaign of hate against Black Americans. Jim, feeding on the hatred most southerners felt towards the newly-freed slaves of the region and playing on whites’ fears and prejudices, worked to pass laws that gradually wore away the precious rights that had been bought with blood on battlefields across the country during the war. Even the passage of Constitutional amendments that were supposed to guarantee rights of equality and justice before the law, voting rights, and other freedoms were worn away by the enormous amount of racist-based work Jim did across almost all states in the old Confederacy.

For example, the voting rights that Black men had won after the war were taken away by Jim’s efforts. He worked to pass laws that created such things as poll taxes (which most Black voters couldn’t pay) and literacy tests (again, which most Black voters couldn’t pass but weren’t given to White voters), thus effectively depriving Blacks of their rights as citizens. These types of laws stayed on the books in some states until the 1960s and have seen a revival in legislation requiring specific types of voter identification that Black citizens often find difficult to procure. That’s how pervasive Jim’s lasting legacy has been.

Courts, stocked with Jim’s allies, consistently applied justice unfairly to Black lawbreakers compared to White defendants. Laws were passed in many states at Jim’s direction that eroded or severely limited the ability of Black citizens to own land, to own businesses, or to travel freely. It was as if Jim’s purpose was to return Black citizens to, if not a state of legal and physical enslavement, at least a social and economic one.

And Jim’s plan worked. Jim’s efforts are why people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had to, in his words, “fight for something that should have been mine since birth” through the 1960s and even today. So, it’s easy to see why Jim remains today the premier racist and bigot produced by this nation. However, Jim isn’t one person, or even a person, actually.

You know him as Jim Crow.

On a Nice Woman

Louise was nice. Everyone said so. In 1957, facing increasing difficulty finding work in Alabama, Louise accepted an invitation from her brother’s family to move to Detroit, Michigan, and find work there. Jobs were plentiful, her brother said, and someone of her disposition and abilities (she had decent schooling) would have no trouble finding work. So, that’s what Louise did.

Now, you should know that Louise was African-American. Detroit, she thought, would also offer a less divided, less segregated society than the Alabama of the 1950s was. Sadly, Louise found out that Detroit was almost equally as racist and segregated as Alabama had been. For example, Louise experienced discrimination when it came to searching for adequate housing in metropolitan Detroit. On the other hand, her brother had been correct; Louise found work as a secretary and receptionist in the Detroit office of United States Congressman John Conyers, one of the first black officeholders from Michigan. It would be a position Louise held until she retired in 1988.

Even during her initial interaction with her boss, Conyers noticed one thing right off the bat about Louise, and it’s something we have already pointed out. She was simply so nice. “You treated her with respect,” the congressman said once, “because she was so calm, so serene, so special.” Louise was often the first point of contact for people reaching out to their congressional delegate, and she took every issue, every question, every appeal personally and seriously. You know that if Louise had her attention on your issue, that she would see to it that it would reach a conclusion that satisfied you.

It was her quiet way, her nicety, that made people open up to her and, well, want to help her any way they could. You knew your issue would be resolved when you brought it to Louise. In her role as Conyers’s spokesperson in the community, Louise visited schools, hospitals, nursing homes, low-income housing communities, jails, and churches, working in her own quiet way to affect change in the way people in that congressional district (and beyond) were treated.

All the while she worked long hours on other people’s behalf, Louise managed to nurse a husband with cancer and a mother with cancer and dementia until both passed away. She herself suffered health issues that she kept quiet and private, working through pain because, as she insisted, people were counting on her voice in carrying issues and situations before Congressman Conyers. She was also attacked by a robber in her own home in retirement, but in court she advocated for leniency for the robber. Who does that?

Someone who was nice.

When Louise passed away in 2005, her funeral was well attended despite the fact that it wasn’t held in Detroit nor even in her old home of Alabama. Louise’s funeral was held in Washington, D.C., and she remains only non-officeholder to have her body lie in state in the United States Capitol Rotunda. But this unique honor wasn’t because Louise was nice.

It’s because you know her better by her first name, Rosa.

Rosa Parks.

On a Heavyweight Champ

You’ve seen the old films of his fights, or, if you haven’t, you can find scads of them on YouTube or other online video platforms. The muscular, black southerner, the undisputed heavyweight champion, who spoke out so eloquently and openly against racial discrimination in the United States, was an in-your-face athlete became known world-wide as someone who combined politics and race relations with popular sport.

The Champ was somewhat of an enigma. To be involved in such a serious sport, he joked in and out of the ring. He taunted his opponents as well as out-classed them in fights. He would smile as he pummeled the poor saps who faced him, pummeled them into submission. Throughout almost 100 fights he took part in during his career, the Champ angered those white segregationists/racists every time he defeated another white fighter. The fact that he smiled when he won his fights rubbed salt into the wounds of the racists. They felt that if this black man could beat white fighters, then perhaps their ideas of white racial superiority were wrong.

His record included over 1/3 of his fights ending with him knocking out the opponent. He held the heavyweight crown across seven years–an almost unheard of time length in the sport. This dominance as well as his outspokenness and his in-your-face attitude combined with the winning personality he exhibited made him, as one historian has said, almost criminally black in the eyes of racist whites.

And it didn’t endear him to many Americans that he was so outspoken against the prosecution of what he saw as an unjust war overseas. The way the Champ saw it, he had nothing worth fighting about with those the US government–a government that denied him civil rights by the way–called the enemies of freedom. So, he sat the war out. That made people question his patriotism.

Yet, to many young black people, the Champ gave voice to their frustrations with the American system and, at the same time, voiced their pride in the accomplishments of African-Americans during last century.

In fact such was his influence that, in later years, one of his greatest fans, Muhammad Ali, called Jack Johnson, who was champ from 1908-1915, one of his life’s major inspirations.