Tuesday, October 25, 2005

The Detroit News;Associated Press The day after Rosa Parks' Dec. 1, 1955, arrest, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was called to organize the Montgomery bus boycott. "Fortunately, Mrs. Parks was ideal for the role assigned to her by history," King wrote in his 1958 book, "Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story."

Parks paved way for King's role

Together, they reshaped history

By Oralandar Brand-Williams / The Detroit News

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In a church in the poorest section of Montgomery, Ala., Martin Luther King Jr. met the woman who would change his life and catapult him to the status of civil rights icon.

King was a fledgling 26-year-old minister when he and Rosa Parks, then 42, first crossed paths, shortly after he was named the minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

They would make history when they met again a few months later after Parks was arrested for defying Montgomery's racial segregation laws.

The day after Parks' Dec. 1, 1955, arrest, King was called by E.D. Nixon, the founder of the Montgomery branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It was Nixon's idea to stage a boycott of the city's buses.

From that moment on, history would link the lives of Parks and King as warriors for the modern civil rights movement.

King later said Parks was the perfect person to spark the movement for justice. She was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus and give her seat to a white passenger.

King met with her a few days after she was released from jail. In his 1958 book, "Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story," King wrote: "One can never understand the action of Mrs. Parks until one realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can't take it no longer.' Mrs. Parks' refusal to move back was her intrepid and courageous affirmation to the world that she had had enough."

King and other activists said Parks' sterling reputation made her the perfect person to rally the movement.

"Fortunately, Mrs. Parks was ideal for the role assigned to her by history," King wrote in his book.

"She was a charming person with a radiant personality, soft-spoken and calm in all situations. Her character was impeccable and her dedication deep-rooted. All of these traits together made her one of the most respected people in the Negro community."

Parks and Johnnie Mae Carr, a childhood friend, saw King speak months before the boycott with no idea of how their lives were about to change.

"When Rosa and I first saw him, I told Rosa he was something else," recalled Carr. "He was very different from the average person."

Many civil rights scholars contend that it was Parks' single act of civil disobedience that catapulted King onto the national civil rights stage.

"We wouldn't be talking about Martin Luther King if it weren't for Rosa Parks," said King scholar Claiborne Carson, a professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "Without Rosa Parks, there would be no Martin Luther King."

King was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, formed to organize bus boycott activities after the boycott was already under way.

King later delivered a rousing speech to boycott supporters at Holt Street Baptist Church.

"Little did we know on that night that we were starting a movement that would rise to international proportions; a movement whose lofty echoes would ring in the ears of people of every nation; a movement that would stagger and astound the imagination of the oppressor," King wrote in December 1956.

A month after the boycott started, Montgomery police arrested King, who was giving people rides as part of the association's car pool.

King was fingerprinted and jailed for the first time.

"I thought I was going to be lynched," King recalled of his Jan. 26, 1956, arrest in the book, "We Shall Overcome."

Four years after the boycott, King went on to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and forged an alliance with the NAACP, the Urban League and other major civil rights groups.

The Detroit News;Associated Press King marches down Woodward Avenue with a crowd of supporters in the civil rights Freedom Parade on June 24, 1963. King was a fledgling 26-year-old minister when he and Rosa Parks, then 42, first crossed paths in Montgomery, Ala.