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65 yrs ago today, Rosa Parks did not give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery to a white man. She helped launch a Nat’l movement & change a nation. For this she is known as a “mother of a movement” but she was a seasoned activist esp for black women. A thread: (tw:rape)
12 years prior, she joined Montgomery AL NAACP chapter, becoming branch secretary. She worked on voter registration, supported wrongfully accused black men, & pressed for schools & public spaces desegregation. She also fought for black women
Black women like black men were targets of white supremacist brutality, but also particularly sexual violence. Rosa Parks was nearly raped as a teen while working as a housekeeper, so she understood the threat while investigating the sexual assault of black women for the NAACP.
In 1944, Recy Taylor,a young black woman was kidnapped & raped by white men in AL. Rosa Parks interviewed her and started a campaign for her defense called Committee for Equal Justice for the Rights of Mrs. Recy Taylor. It attracted support from WEB Dubois & Mary Church Terrell
Unsurprisingly and sadly, Recy never got justice. Two all white male juries refused to convict her rapists. But Rosa Parks stayed involved in fighting for black women survivors of sexual violence. She launched more campaigns for others including
Gertrude Perkins who in 1949 was a young black woman in walking home in Montgomery AL when she was kidnapped by two police officers and raped. Parks launched a campaign for Perkins defense too. Again, Perkins like Taylor never got justice
So by 1955 on December 1, Rosa Parks was a boss activist, freedom fighter and trailblazer in anti-rape advocacy. Rosa is known for her courageous stand on Dec 1, but that is not the full extent of her work and her life.
There are some articles, interviews w/survivors like Recy, and one particular book to read that talks about Rosa Parks’ work, Recy Taylor, Gertrude Perkins and how violence, particularly sexual violence was used against black women during Jim Crow https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/111678/at-the-dark-end-of-the-street-by-danielle-l-mcguire/