The death of Rosa Parks underscores that the generation responsible for the key victories of the civil rights movement is fading into history, leaving its survivors with the challenge of keeping the movement’s memory and work alive even as today’s youth often seem disengaged.
“As people get older and people pass, it becomes more and more difficult to have that sort of firsthand knowledge” of the fight for integration, said U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who first met Parks as a 17-year-old student and activist.
Parks, 92, died Monday at her home in Detroit.
Lewis, who once headed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, added that the social challenges of today – persistent racial gaps in poverty, education and wealth, among others – highlight the continued need for activists and teachers to honor Parks’ spirit.
Parks is one of a handful of civil rights figures, along with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, whose name most young people seem to know.
But many are more familiar with “Rosa Parks,” the hit song by the hip-hop group OutKast, than her full story, said Renada Johnson, a 25-year-old graduate student at Bowie State University in Maryland.
In 1955, Parks was a seamstress and longtime secretary for the local NAACP who defied segregation laws and refused to give up her seat in a whites-only section of a public bus in Montgomery, Ala.
Then 42, she inspired tens of thousands of working-class blacks – led by King – to boycott the local buses for more than a year. Finally, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that declared Montgomery’s segregated seating laws unconstitutional. The effort highlighted persistent bias against blacks across the nation.
“But that was 50 years ago,” said Bruce Gordon, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “A lot has changed in 50 years.”
Parents who were active in the movement say they sense a disconnect when speaking with their children.
“I remember my son once said to me, ‘Why did you sit in the back of the bus? Why didn’t you just go up front?’ I said, ‘I didn’t want to get killed,’” said Earl Graves Sr., 70, publisher of Black Enterprise Magazine. “He looked at me and blinked.”
“Young people have to be reignited,” he added.
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