Remembering Rosa Parks in Inglewood
Christianna Kyriacou | 2-11-2010 | Comments |
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The cool rhythms of jazz reverberated through the Inglewood library auditorium on Manchester Boulevard Saturday afternoon as family and friends gathered to honor the memory of civil rights activist Rosa Parks.Parks, who died in 2005, is best known for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man—a single, courageous act that advanced desegregation efforts and ultimately altered the course of the nation.
“I personally would not have the courage to do what she did. I admire her for that,” said her first cousin, Thomas Williamson, a retired bassist who performed at the event, which he also hosted and paid for. “I wouldn’t have done that and most people wouldn’t have, not at that particular time in our history.”
Thomas Williamson | bassist, host and first cousin of Rosa Parks
About 35 community members, friends and admirers of Parks joined with 15 of her family members, according to Agnes McClain, a second cousin of Parks’, at a gathering billed as one of many Black History Month events scheduled in Inglewood.
“Rosa Parks sat down that day so Martin Luther King and others could stand up. Even a quiet, gentle woman can propel a nation into change,” McClain (pictured left) said, at the “Remembering Rosa Parks” tribute.
Williamson joined four other musicians to play “Impressions” for Parks, in honor of the impressions she made on the lives of so many, he said.
Loretta White, a Detroit native, traveled to Inglewood to share her experiences growing up with “Auntie Rosie,” as she fondly called her older cousin Parks.
“The world knew Rosa Parks as the lady who wouldn’t get out of her seat on the bus, but the family knows her a different way,” White told those in attendance before going on to share the side of Parks little known, her devotion to family.
To White, “Auntie Rosie” was a storyteller, hairdresser, cook, nurse, teacher and the seamstress that made her prom dress.
“She taught us dignity, pride, responsibility and most of all, to be proud of our heritage,” White said. (Loretta White | Park's first cousin, pictured far right)
“She’s a relative that just happens to be famous,” Williamson said, recalling when he read about her heroic act in his friend’s Jet magazine as a 16-year-old.
He told his friend, “See my family don’t take any stuff off anybody.”
Williamson was spurred to host the Parks memorial after witnessing an exchange between his famous cousin and a young African American boy during a bus ride to Exposition Park for the opening of the Rosa Parks Learning Center at the California Science Center.
The boy was not impressed with Parks’ act and told her, “Oh, that’s nothing. I can do that. I wouldn’t get up out of my seat either.”
A Latino man stepped in, describing Parks’ virtues for the boy, telling him, “Look at that woman, that’s history there.”
In that moment Williamson realized that young African Americans had come to take Rosa Parks for granted. “This is a tragedy," Williamson said. “This is an African American kid who’s trashing what she’s done and here’s a Hispanic guy, maybe not even from this country, who recognized what she did.”
Twelve years later, Williamson stood in the library in Inglewood and considered his cousin’s legacy, and his role in preserving it. “My whole goal was to try and reach more younger people… who really don’t know much other than this bus ride thing,” said Williamson, who had hoped for a larger turnout.
Last year, when Williamson held a similar event in Parks’ memory at a Pasadena library, the crowd was even smaller.
“There’s some disappointment that a number of people didn’t show up that I had invited. There weren’t an awful lot of people [here] today,” Williamson said. But then he added: “It’s not disappointing ‘cause I feel that even if you reach two or three people, it’s worth it sometimes. I don’t think we reached people in there but you never know. Maybe, for one of these kids, it will ring a bell downstream and they might display some courage to change society.”
LEFT | Michael Session, Sax player
Tags: agnes mcclain black history month civil rights inglewood loretta white rosa parks thomas williamson