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.
96. John Conyers, interview by George Metcalf, April 8, 1970, SC.
97. John Conyers, oral history interviews on tape, SC.
98. John Conyers, interview by George Metcalf, SC.
99. “Detroit Primary Runs Into White ‘Backlash’ But Not Enough to Make It Election Guide,” Wall Street Journal, September 3, 1964.
100. In 1967, courts in both places would declare these referendums unconstitutional.
101. James Brooks, “2nd Negro Congressman from Detroit This Nov,” Chicago Defender, October 3, 1964.
102. Ibid.
103. Conyers, author interview.
104. “America Salutes Rosa Parks,” video of Kennedy Center celebration, 1990, SC.
105. Adam Shakoor, author phone interview, September 9, 2010.
106. “Warrior Conyers’ Battle Cry: ‘You Can Prevent Ghetto Fires,’” Christian Science Monitor, September 8, 1969.
107. JoAnn Watson, Leon Atchison, and Larry Horwitz, author interview, May 5, 2011.
108. I am grateful for conversations with Douglas Brinkley
that helped me clarify this section.
109. Fine, Violence in the Model City.
110. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 189.
111. Watson, Atchison, and Horwitz, author interview.
112. Hate letter, May 19, 1969, Box 1, Folder 1–7, RPP.
113. Hate letter, March 8, 1971, Box 1, Folder 1-7, RPP.
114. Hate letter, April 5, 1972, Box 1 Folder 1-7, RPP.
115. Ned Touchstone, “Rosa Admits to Editor That She Attended Notorious Training School,” Councilor (publication of the White Citizen’s Council in Shreveport), Folder 2–17, RPP.
116. Jason Sokol, There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights (New York: Knopf, 2006), 90.
117. Conyers says that even before he was elected he had decided that “when I get elected the first person I will hire is Rosa Parks.” Conyers, author interview.
118. Watson, Atchison, and Horwitz, author interview.
119. Atchison claims Parks had sizable medical bills for her mother and husband, though it’s not clear if he’s referring to the 1970s or to 1965, when she was first hired. Skwira, “The Rosa Parks Story,” 18.
120. Jamila Brathwaite, author phone interview, March 8, 2011.
121. Watson, Atchison, and Horwitz, author interview.
122. Conyers, author interview.
123. Parks, CRDP, 31–32.
124. Interview with Carter, Rosa Parks, Box 2, File 7, GMP.
125. The others were Phil Burton, George Brown, Don Edwards, Bill Ryan, John Dow, and Edith Green. “Michigan Legislator Named SCLC ’67 Award Recipient,” Chicago Defender, August 15, 1967.
126. Watson, Atchison, and Horwitz, author interview, May 5, 2011.
127. Fred Durhal, author phone interview, May 21, 2012.
128. Watson, Atchison, and Horwitz, author interview, May 5, 2011.
129. In July 1965, Horton wrote Parks to ask if she was willing, on the suggestion of John Segenthaler of the Nashville Tennessean, to sue the White Citizens’ Council in connection with the billboards in Tennessee. It is not clear if this went anywhere. Horton to Parks, July 15, 1965, Box 22, Folder 22, HP.
130. Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 161.
131. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 198.
132. Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.
133. Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks: My Story (New York: Dial Books, 1992), 192.
134. Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.
135. David Levering Lewis, King: A Biography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 291.
136. Horton to Parks, April 15, 1965, Box 22, Folder 22, HP; Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 164.
137. Renata Adler, “Letter from Selma,” New Yorker, April 10, 1965.
138. Rosa Parks, preface to Beatrice Siegel, Murder on the Highway: The Viola Liuzzo Story (New York: Four Winds Press, 1993), 2–3.
139. Memo from Myles Horton, April 1, 1965, Folder 2–17, RPP.
140. Rosa Parks, Myles Horton, and E. D. Nixon, radio interview by Studs Terkel, June 8, 1973, transcript, Box 14, Folder 4, MHP.
141. Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 164.
142. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 198.
143. The Durrs had a big gathering after the march that Parks did not attend; many white progressives went, including C. Vann Woodward, Nat Hentoff, and Pete Seeger.
144. Parks’s preface, Siegel, Murder on the Highway, 3.
145. Parks, My Story, 192.
146. Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 188.
147. Ibid., 202; WPAC newsletter, Box 4, RPP.
148. Noonan, author phone interview.
149. Wesley Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for a New America (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
150. Dan Aldridge, author phone interview, October 24, 2010.
151. See Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes.
152. Ibid., 71.
153. Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 455.
154. Faith Holsaert et al., Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 509.
155. Dorothy Aldridge, author phone interview, October 24, 2010.
156. Carol Schmidt, “Individualism a Luxury We Can No Longer Afford,” Michigan Chronicle, October 8, 1966.
157. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 191–92.
158. Ed Vaughn, author phone interview, September 10, 2010.
159. Barbara Alexander, author phone interview, May 23, 2012.
160. Vaughn, author phone interview.
161. Moon, Untold Tales, 381.
162. Johnson, Race and Remembrance, 56.
163. Moon, Untold Tales, 358.
164. Fine, Violence in the Model City, 1.
165. Smith, Dancing in the Street, 193.
166. Henry Hampton, Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s (New York: Bantam, 1990), 378.
167. Ibid., 391.
168. James Smethurst, The Black Arts Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 225.
169. Ed Vaughn, interview conducted by Blackside, Inc., June 6, 1989, for Eyes on the PrizeII, available at Washington University Digital Library, http://digital.wustl.edu/eyesontheprize/.
170. Smith, Dancing in the Street, 197.
171. Robert Mast, Detroit Lives (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 170.
172. Fine, Violence in the Model City, 296
173. Dorothy Aldridge, author interview, March 22, 2012.
174. Selby, Odyssey, 66.
175. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 202–3.
176. Selby, Odyssey, 66.
177. Rosa Parks, interview by Steven Millner, January 20, 1980, in David Garrow, ed., The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956 (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 566.
178. Hampton, Voices of Freedom, 392.
179. Conyers, author interview.
180. Selby, Odyssey, 66.
181. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 346.
182. Smith, Dancing in the Street, 197.
183. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 203. Brinkley interviewed Parks in the 1990s; this and his critical view of the riots likely shaped her comments in their interview. Brinkley also quotes a 1971 Ebony article in which Parks is displeased by “lootings and burnings in the name of civil rights” but does not finish the rest of her quote: “Regardless of whether or not one person may know what to do about segregation and oppression, it’s better to protest than to accept injustice.” “Whatever Happened to Mrs. Rosa Parks,” Ebony, August 1971.
184. Parks, CRDP, 29.
185. Selby, Odyssey, 66.
186. Ibid.
187. Parks interview, BWOHP, 256.
188. “Whatever Happened to Mrs. Rosa Parks,” Ebony, August 1971.
189. Hampton, Voices of Freedom, 400.
190. “$30 Billion Aid Program Offered by Rep. Conyers,” Norfolk (VA) Journal and Guide, August 26, 1967.
191. Dan Aldridge, author phone interview.
192. Smith, Dancing in the Street, 201.
193. Ibid.
194. Ibid., 287.
195. Ibid., 200–202; Fine, Violence in the Model City, 286.
196. Dan Aldridge, author phone interview.
197. Dorothy Aldridge, author phone interview, October 24, 2010.
198. Fine, Violence in the Model City, 286. The Detroit Bar Association considered disbarring the lawyers who participated in the trial.
199. John Hersey, Algiers Motel Incident (New York: Hamilton, 1968), 350.
200. Dorothy Aldridge, author phone interview.
201. Rhea McCauley, author phone interview.
202. L. C. Fortenberry, “The Sentinel Queries Rosa Parks,” Los Angeles Sentinel, August 17, 1958.
203. Parks, Millner interview, in Garrow, The Walking City, 566.
204. Tom Greenwood, “Grosse Pointe Recalls King’s Emotional Visit in 1968,” Detroit News, March 14, 1988.
205. “Rosa Parks: Spark of 1955 Still Warm,” Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1971.
206. For full text of the speech, audio recording, and accompanying press, see “Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1968 Speech at Grosse Pointe High School,” Grosse Pointe Historical Society website, http://www.gphistorical.org/.
CHAPTER SEVEN: “ANY MOVE TO SHOW WE ARE DISSATISFIED”
1. 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), 17.
2. A. F. Mahan, “Active Rights Movement Began on a Bus,” Record, August 26, 1964.
3. “‘I’d Do It Again’ Says Rights Action Initiator,” Los Angeles Times, December 16, 1965.
4. Rosa Parks, interview by John H. Britton, September 28, 1967, CRDP, 33.
5. Earl Selby and Miriam Selby, Odyssey: Journey through Black America (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971), 66.
6. Parks, CRDP, 21.
7. Interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.
8. Muhammad Ahmad, author phone interview, January 7, 2011.
9. Julian Bond, author phone interview, November 15, 2010.
10. William Anderson, author phone interview, May 6, 2011; Herb Boyd, author interview, June 11, 2011.
11. JoAnn Watson, Leon Atchison, and Larry Horwitz, author interview, May 5, 2011.
12. Rosa Parks, interview, June 19, 1981, You Got to Move research files, Folder 1, Box 11, LMP.
13. John Conyers, author interview, March 11, 2011.
14. Chokwe Lumumba, author phone interview, September 9, 2010.
15. Frank Joyce, author phone interview, March 28, 2012.
16. Bob Greene, “Impact of a Single Act” (1973), Folder 1–7, RPP.
17. Douglas Brinkley, Rosa Parks: A Life (New York: Penguin, 2000), 189.
18. Carolyn Green, author phone interview, May 29, 2012.
19. Ed Vaughn, author phone interview, September 10, 2010.
20. Rosemary Bray, “Rosa Parks: A Legendary Moment, a Lifetime of Activism,” Ms., November/December 1995, 46–47.
21. Watson, Atchison, and Horwitz, author interview.
22. Vernon Jarrett, “Forgotten Heroes of the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” series, Chicago Tribune, December 1975.
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks Page 43
