Rosa Parks: Of Buses, Jim Crow and Pancakes

Rosa Parks is a household name. She is best known for her refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a crowded bus in Montgomery, Alabama, back in December, 1955. The front of the bus was for whites, while blacks sat at the back.

The arrest of gracious, calm Parks, a seamstress commuting home at the end of the day, sparked headlines nationwide and around the globe. The arrest also triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a year-long event and the first large U. S. protest against segregation in the civil rights movement. Ultimately the boycott led to the dismantling of Jim Crow segregation.

The bus boycott had been planned for weeks, but moved into high gear on Dec. 5, 1955, the day of Parks’ trial. Though she had paid her fare to the Jim Crow bus driver, J. Fred Blake, when he ordered her to the back of the bus, she refused. She was arrested and fined $14.

Against a backdrop of shootings, burnings and screamed epithets, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., rose to prominence as the founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which sponsored the 1963 civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, and the March on Washington and worked hard in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Shy, gentle Parks is occasionally depicted as a bystander (or sitter) in the civil rights movement. Not so. Born in Tuskegee in 1913, she was a seasoned activist well before the bus incident. She was the secretary of the NAACP and with her husband, Raymond Parks, was active for years in the NAACP, especially with women who circulated flyers, were hosed by mobs and refused to stand down in the face of violence and mayhem. She organized to free the Scottsboro Boys.

Despite death threats and hardships, Parks remained committed to social justice and human rights until her death in 2005 in Detroit, Michigan.

Ultimately Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. The Rosa Parks Collection in the Library of Congress contains over 10,000 documents and photographs from 1866 - 2006. It also contains her recipe for Featherlite Pancakes written on the back of an envelope.

Try it, you’ll love it: Assemble on the countertop 1 cup flour, 2 tbs. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt, 2 tbs. sugar, 1 egg, 1 1/4 cups milk, 1/3 cup peanut butter melted, 1 tbs. shortening or oil. In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. In another bowl whisk together egg, milk, melted peanut butter and shortening or oil. Combine with dry ingredients. Cook at 275 degrees on a griddle and serve with honey, syrup or preserves, or just a dab of butter.

Thank you, Mrs. Parks! You were great then and you're great now.