When people refer to Rosa Parks as the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement," she smiles. She's just as proud of other things she's done since that day in 1955 when she was arrested for refusing to give her bus seat to a white man.
She's proud of her work with voter registration and with organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, she said. But if that bus ride is what it took to get some changes, "I'm just grateful for it."In spite of the things that are not so good today, it is far, far better than it was a few years ago," Parks said during a press conference at Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City Monday. Parks was in Utah to celebrate Human Rights Day at a NAACP-sponsored luncheon. Tuesday morning she was scheduled to make brief comments at Brigham Young University.
"I'm hoping my being here will give some encouragement and incentive to those still looking for a free and open society. Much progress has been made politically. Maybe not quite as much economically for all people, but some have made progress. We still have obstacles in our way . . . before we consider ourselves free from racism."
Dec. 1, 1955, is vivid to the soft-spoken, 78-year-old woman. It wasn't a matter of moving to the back of the bus, she said. That part, reserved for blacks, was "extremely crowded." She sat on a row with three other black people and a stop or two later, when a white man got on the bus, they were all expected to move.
She refused and was arrested.
"They wanted four people to stand to accommodate this one man. I felt I should not have to be treated in this manner. I felt my rights again violated."
While parents and teachers tell their children of the woman who sparked a bus strike and an end to segregation, she said, "I try not to think of it very much." She was not feeling a "political spirit." She was thinking about what she had to do the next day and about getting a good night's sleep and instead, she said, she went to jail.
During the luncheon, Parks responded to a prolonged standing ovation by assuring the audience that "as long as I can breathe and talk and be concerned, I will keep on keeping on."
Guest speaker Sterling M. McMurrin noted changes in Utah from the days when a local hotel canceled a reservation because a panelist in a group was black, or the days when blacks had to sit in the balcony at theaters. "Obvious strides have been made."
But he issued a warning. "I share the view . . . that we are facing very, very serious times with respect to race relations. I am not inclined to be particularly optimistic. There is no evidence at all that everything is going to turn out all right."
Former Salt Lake Mayor Palmer DePaulis received the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Award, which has been presented since 1985. Mary Green, a supervisory operating accountant for the Veterans Administration Regional Office in Salt Lake City, was selected to receive the first Rosa Parks Award, which honors a woman who has shown courage and helped "to keep the dream alive."