Panelists: Message of Boycott: One Person Can Make a Difference

In a tribute to civil rights leaders Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., several of their friends and colleagues reflected on the 45th anniversary of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott at the Kennedy School of Government yesterday.

The panelists, all civil rights leaders themselves, emphasized the individual courage it took to get the civil rights movement going and propel it to fruition.

The boycott began when, on December 1, 1955, Parks, a secretary for the NAACP, refused to give up her seat to a white woman, violating a municipal law.

"Parks' action showed that one person who really has a commitment can make a difference," said panelist Dorothy Height, who is chair and president of Emerita, the national council of Negro women.

Height related recollections of a conversation she'd had with Parks herself.

"Rosa told me that her courage at that moment came from a voice in her head saying, 'You're a child of God, you can make a difference.' It drowned out the voices of everyone trying to get her to move," said Height.

Parks' action led to "the birth of a new improved Negro, who now had pride and dignity," said Juanita Abernathy, who was a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King during '60s.

Fred Gray, the attorney who defended Rosa Parks in the Alabama courts, said it was important not to forget that many unsung actors also contributed to the civil rights movement.

Gray cited his first case, in which he defended a 15-year-old girl who had refused to give up her seat on a bus shortly before Parks' arrest.

"Actions such as hers paved the way," Gray said. "The civil rights movement did not happen by chance. It took brave and absolutely committed people to see it through."

Gray's own experience is a sort of vindication of this philosophy. He said he made a secret commitment to himself to become a lawyer and "destroy every segregated piece of legislature in Alabama law."

After leaving the state to attend a law school that admitted blacks, he went on to defend Parks and King, and to help to desegregate Alabama.

Despite the many accomplishments of the civil rights movement, several of the panelists used the words, "We still have a long way to go" at various points during each presentation.

"In the U.S. today, we do not even want to be reminded that racism exists. This tells me we don't want to do anything about it," said Abernathy.

She advised students in the audience to be very suspicious of organizations where everyone looks the same and to work to change them. She said they should be particularly careful to choose to live in racially and economically diverse areas.

Gray pointed to what she said were worrisome trends in Alabama at the moment. For the first time in 20 years, he said, there will be no black judges on the highest state court, and electoral districts have been redistributed in a way that decreases the number of black voices in Congress.

"You can't tell me that in this country, with all that we can do in outer space that we can't solve race problem," said Grays.