... Rosa Parks was a plant. She was a long time member of the civil rights movement and knew all the leaders personally, including MLK. There was another woman selected to be the person on the bus but that woman was not married and she became pregnant. The leaders knew there would be no sympathy for an unwed mother in such a religiously intolerant time and area. They scraped the idea.
From her own memoirs: “I kept thinking about my mother and my grandparents and how strong they were. I knew that there was a possibility of being mistreated, but an opportunity was being given me to do what I had asked of others.” (Bolding mine)
I'm not saying what she did wasn't great, but it was a well planned operation.
While
one of your statements is correct -- that Rosa Parks was a long-time member of the civil rights movement -- your extension of that (into a claim that Rosa Parks was
selected as part of a
well-planned operation) is another matter altogether. I don't know of anyone who was involved in the Montgomery bus boycott -- including Rosa Parks herself -- who has attested to what you are claiming. I would be interested in learning the sources for your belief in this.
You say that "
There was another woman selected to be the person on the bus but that woman was not married and she became pregnant." If true, it's an interesting coincidence, because this is strikingly similar to the case of Claudette Colvin.
Colvin was a 15-year-old girl who, in March 1955, refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. After Colvin's arrest, the Montgomery civil rights community seriously considered the idea of organizing a campaign around Colvin's case. Like the woman you refer to, Colvin was unmarried, and like the woman you refer to Colvin became pregnant shortly after refusing to give up her seat on the bus.
But Colvin was not
selected to do this as part of an
organized plan; she did it on her own. Colvin was active in civil rights youth groups, so she was familiar with the stories of civil rights activists who had challenged the segregation laws, and she was inspired by these stories to carry out an act of non-violent resistance. I don't know of any account by anyone involved in the matter which claims otherwise.
There had been discussions in the civil rights community about how, if someone were to refuse to give up their seat again (as had already happened several times in various places) it would be a good idea use that in order to mount a legal challenge to the segregation laws. So after Colvin, on her own initiative, chose to refuse to give up her seat, there were discussions about organizing such a campaign around Colvin's case. But when it was learned that Colvin was unmarried and pregnant, it was decided not to attempt to use her case as the basis for a legal challenge to the segregation laws, and to wait for a better case to come along.
That, at least, is what I recall reading in the accounts I have seen and heard of the Montgomery bus boycott. But I make no claim to having read every account by every member of the Civil Rights movement, and I am many years behind in my reading on this subject, so it is quite possible that there is a book or article out there detailing what you are talking about which I haven't seen.
But I can't help suspecting that the unnamed woman referred to in your post is actually Claudette Colvin. Is that the case? And if so, why is your version of this story so at odds with the story as told by the people who were there and took part?
Or is there indeed another unmarried pregnant woman you have in mind? If so, who is she, and where did you hear or read about her?
You don't provide any source regarding this claim that there was an unnamed woman who was selected to be part of this plan, prior to the (alleged) selection of Parks for the role. I find that odd. Skeptics, when presenting a claim which they think others are unfamiliar with, usually make a point of including a source and supporting evidence. One of my unwritten rules of skepticism is that, when an established poster here neglects to include a reliable source, it's likely because they don't have one.
In contrast, you do provide a source for your claim that Rosa Parks was selected to be a test case -- Rosa Parks' memoirs. That would seem like a strong source of information on this matter, if the passage you included in your post means what you say it means.
But that is a big
if. You are asserting that in the passage you reproduced Rosa Parks is acknowledging having been chosen by some council of civil rights leaders to become a test case -- but the passage itself doesn't actually say that.
The passage can be
construed to mean that, yes. Likewise, there was a poster not long ago who took an actual quote from Bobby Kennedy and construed it to mean that
Bobby had ordered the assassination of his brother John F Kennedy. The fact that words can be construed a certain way doesn't mean that's what they were actually intended to mean.
That's why I'd like to be clear on whether you have actually read the memoirs for yourself and know what Parks was talking about in that passage, or if this is simply what you have assumed (without checking) that this passage means.
There are two obvious interpretations of the sentence you have bolded. One is that, when she says she has been given an opportunity, she means that leaders in the civil rights community chose her to be a test case. The other is that, when she was riding the bus that day, an unexpected event occurred and this is the opportunity she was referring to.
On the day Parks refused to surrender her seat, Parks was sitting in
the black section of the bus. But the bus had filled up, and several additional white passengers got on. The driver of the bus then told Parks and several other black people to vacate their seats so that the white passengers could sit. This is not something Parks could have planned on in advance; but when it did occur that day, she felt fully within her rights to refuse to move and saw this as an opportunity to challenge laws and customs which she deeply opposed.
I strongly suspect that a reading of Parks' memoirs will
not include anything about her being part of meetings where it was planned in advance for her to refuse to give up her seat on a bus. I also strongly suspect that a reading of her memoirs will show that the opportunity she refers to in the passage you bolded is a reference to her being unexpectedly asked to vacate her seat in the black section of the bus.
But I do not have her memoirs at hand, and am not sure if I have ever read them. So if you
have read them, you are in a better position than I am to state what they say.
Let me ask the question clearly, then: In bolding that particular sentence, are you saying
I have read Rosa Parks' memoirs, and I have bolded this particular passage to convey to the rest of you an accurate sense of what I know from my reading of the book that Parks was talking about ? Or are you saying:
I have not read Rosa Parks' memoirs myself, but here is an excerpt from them which I came across; I have bolded it in order to convey to the rest of you the impression I got when reading it of what I think she must have meant?
Rather than derail this thread, I am starting a new thread
("Rosa Parks was a plant") in which you -- or anyone else who would care to provide evidence for the claims you are making -- can address the questions I have raised here. But I wanted to raise the matter in this thread where the claim appears, as a matter of general skeptical principle.
I dislike seeing an unsupported claim such as yours being left unquestioned, because there is the danger that future readers of this thread will simply assume (from the confident manner in which you asserted it, and from the lack of skeptical questioning) that your claim has merit. It may turn out that your claim does have merit -- but until you have stated your claim clearly and provided good evidence for it, people should not assume that.
I believe that curiosity about a claim, rather than hostility to it, should be what prompts a skeptic to ask questions such as the ones I have raised. A claim such as yours should not go unquestioned. Even those who are not familiar with Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott should have spotted the
suspicious vagueness of your statement concerning an unnamed woman who had been selected prior to Parks and the
alarming ambiguity of the passage you bolded and offered as evidence. Skepticism should not be a matter of only challenging matters which one disagrees with or is certain are wrong. Skepticism should be a matter of looking questioningly at any odd and unsupported claims.
) go, we can limit our critique to the crap coming out of their mouths, and not about all the junk going into their mouths.
