The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #10743 Message #1286546
Posted By: Azizi
01-Oct-04 - 08:37 PM
Thread Name: Rosa Parks-Congressional Medal of Honor
Subject: RE: Rosa Parks
My memory of "If you miss me at the back of the bus" is slightly different than the one you have listed in the DigiTrad.
Here are the words that I sang along with others in while I was in a New Jersey NAACP youth group in the early 1960s:
If you don't find me in the back of the bus
If you don't see me back there
Come on up to the front of the bus
I'll be sittin up there
I'll be sittin up there
I'll be sittin up there
Come on up to the front of the bus
I'll be sittin up there.
If you don't see me in the school room
If you don't find me over there
Come on down to the jail house *
I'll be singin {prayin} in there
I'll be singin in there
I'll be singin in there
Come on down to the jail house.
I'll be singin in there.
*sung by or referred to college students who were arrested for spearheading/participating in protest sit-ins and other civil rights demonstrations
I'm pretty certain that this civil rights song {freedom song} was based on a spiritual, as were most African American civil rights songs, including "We Shall Overcome".
As a spiritual, "We'll Overcome" had a more uptempo beat than the civil rights song. As I remember it, the first verse was
We'll overcome
We'll overcome
We'll overcome someday
{Oh-o)deep in my heart {if in my heart}
I do believe {I do not yield}
We'll overcome some day.
--
Other verses I remember were "We'll wear a crown"; "We'll see his face"; and "We'll be like him"...
But that was a digression. What I wanted to say was that I love and respect Rosa Parks too. However, it is a shame that all those freedom fighters who came before her, along with her, and after her {with the exception of Dr. Martin Luther King} get so little recognition and respect.
I have read books that indicate that Mrs Park's refusal to get up from her seat was a planned protest. Furthermore, it is said that Rosa Park was selected to be the test case to challenge segregated seating in Montgomery, Alabama because it was thought that her light complexion and "middle class" air would make her a better symbol and spokesperson for that movement, and make her more sympathetic to the White Montgomery community.
All this takes nothing away from Rosa Parks.
Rosa Parks as tired seamstress might be a better made for TV movie, and I'm sure she was physically, and emotionally tired of being treated like a 2nd class citizen. But I don't believe that her refusal to get up was a spontaneous decision. Instead, if this account is true as I believe it is, it shows how those fighting to remove laws and practices that upheld segregation have to strategize to meet their objectives.