A Quote by Jesse White
I first met Dr. King in 1954 when I was a student at Alabama State University and a member of a local church down there. He was in town to organize a rally against public transportation. Rosa Parks had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man, which was illegal back then.
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What you might not know is that shortly after she worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others, Rosa Parks had to leave her home in Alabama to escape the constant threat of violence.
I heard of Martin Luther King Jr. when I was 15 years old. I heard of Rosa Parks. And I met Dr. King in 1958 at the age of 18. I met Rosa Parks ... But to pick up a fun comic book - some people used to call them "funny books" - to pick this little book up, it sold for 10 cents, 12 pages or 14 pages? 14 pages I digested. And it inspired me. And I said to myself, "If the people of Montgomery can do this, maybe I can do something. Maybe I can make a contribution."
If Rosa Parks had not refused to move to the back of the bus, you and I might never have heard of Dr. Martin Luther King.
This is how a revolution begins. It begins when someone grows tired of standing idly by, waiting for history's arc to bend toward justice, and instead decides to give it a swift shove. It begins when a black seamstress named Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in the segregated South.
I met Rosa Parks when I was 17. I met Dr. [Martin Luther] King when I was 18. These two individuals inspired me to find a way to get in the way, to get in trouble. So I got in good trouble, necessary trouble.
I think, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks will go down as one of the two most well-known and remembered figures out of the Civil Rights Movement.
The action of Rosa Parks, the words and leadership of Dr. King inspired me. I was deeply inspired. I wanted to do something.
I remember the first thing I did when I found out I was illegal was to get rid of my thick Filipino accent. I figured that I had to talk white and talk black at the same time, like Charlie Rose and Dr. Dre. If I can talk white and black then no one is ever going to think that I'm "illegal."
I first met Mr Tarkunde in 1976 during the Emergency, when Civil Liberties had been extinguished and the Habeas Corpus case was being heard by the Supreme Court, which would decide whether one could even approach the courts against illegal detention by the State, during the Emergency.
Rosa Parks was an unlikely person, but she became an instrument of the people's will in that community who were tired. They said she was tired from working and perhaps she was - but she herself said later that she was spiritually tired and weary of being humiliated by being asked to move back so that a white person could occupy her seat.
When I went to college, I went to a junior college. I wanted to go to the University of Alabama but had to go to junior college first to get my GPA up. I did a half-year of junior college, then dropped out and had my daughter. College was always an opportunity to go back. But she, my daughter, was my support. I gave up everything for her.
I know I wanted to be a comic when I was nine. I was thirteen the first time I did it. I was attending a Methodist Church youth retreat at the University of Southern Alabama. They held a talent show on the last night. I won, and then I made out with a 14-year-old girl from Prattville, Alabama.
Rosa Parks wasn't the first one to rebel against the segregated seats. I was the first one.
If Willie Nelson had been Rosa Parks, there never would have been a civil rights movement in this country, because he refuses to leave the back of the bus.
I was born in the late '70s and grew up in the deep South, and I was very much still of an era where racism was a casual part of white people's public and private lives, though it had been pushed more into its own little echo chamber by then. As a five year old, I saw a fully costumed Klan circle, complete with burning cross, on a town square in rural Alabama at high noon.
I was raised in Arizona, and I went to public school, and the extent of my knowledge of the civil-rights movement was the story of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. I wonder how much my generation knows.
