The real story of Rosa Parks -- and why we need to confront myths about black history

Black history taught in US schools is often watered-down, riddled with inaccuracies and stripped of its context and rich, full-bodied historical figures. Equipped with the real story of Rosa Parks, professor David Ikard highlights how making the realities of race more benign and digestible harms us all -- and emphasizes the power and importance of historical accuracy.

I am the proud father
of two beautiful children,

Elijah, 15, and Octavia, 12.

When Elijah was in the fourth grade,

he came to me,

came home from school
bubbling over with excitement

about what he had learned that day
about African-American history.

Now, I'm an African-American
and cultural studies professor,

and so, as you can imagine,

African-American culture
is kind of serious around my home.

So I was very proud that my son
was excited about what he had learned

that day in school.

So I said, "What did you learn?"

He said, "I learned about Rosa Parks."

I said, "OK, what did you learn
about Rosa Parks?"

He said, "I learned that Rosa Parks
was this frail, old black woman

in the 1950s

in Montgomery, Alabama.

And she sat down on this bus,

and she had tired feet,

and when the bus driver told her
to give up her seat to a white patron,

she refused because she had tired feet.

It had been a long day,

and she was tired of oppression,

and she didn't give up her seat.

And she marched with Martin Luther King,

and she believed in nonviolence."

And I guess he must have looked at my face

and saw that I was
a little less than impressed

by his

... um ...

history lesson.

And so he stopped, and he was like,
"Dad, what's wrong? What did I get wrong?"

I said, "Son, you didn't
get anything wrong,

but I think your teacher
got a whole lot of things wrong."

(Laughter)

He said, "Well, what do you mean?"

I said, "Rosa Parks was not tired.

She was not old.

And she certainly didn't have tired feet."

He said, "What?"

I said, "Yes!

Rosa Parks was only 42 years old" --

Yeah, you're shocked, right?
Never heard that.

"Rosa Parks was only 42 years old,

she had only worked six hours that day,
and she was a seamstress

and her feet were just fine.

(Laughter)

The only thing that she was tired of

was she was tired of inequality.

She was tired of oppression."

And my son said,

"Well, why would my teacher
tell me this thing?

This is confusing for me."

Because he loved his teacher,
and she was a good teacher,

a young-ish, 20-something white woman,

really, really smart, pushed him,
so I liked her as well.

But he was confused.
"Why would she tell me this?" he said.

He said, "Dad, tell me more. Tell me more.
Tell me more about Rosa Parks."

And I said, "Son, I'll do you one better."

He was like, "What?"

I said, "I'm going to buy
her autobiography,

and I'm going to let you
read it yourself."

(Laughter)

So as you can imagine,

Elijah wasn't too excited about
this new, lengthy homework assignment

that his dad had just given him,
but he took it in stride.

And he came back after he had read it,

and he was excited
about what he had learned.

He said, "Dad, not only was Rosa Parks
not initially into nonviolence,

but Rosa Parks's grandfather,
who basically raised her

and was light enough to pass as white,

used to walk around town
with his gun in his holster,

and people knew if you messed with
Mr. Parks's children or grandchildren,

he would put a cap
in your proverbial bottom."

(Laughter)

Right?

He was not someone to mess with.

And he said, "I also learned
that Rosa Parks married a man in Raymond

who was a lot like her grandfather."

He would organize.

He was a civil rights activist.

He would organize events

and sometimes the events would be
at Rosa Parks's home.

And one time Rosa Parks remarked

that there were so many guns on the table,

because they were prepared for somebody
to come busting into the door

that they were prepared
for whatever was going to go down,

that Rosa Parks said, "There were
so many guns on the table

that I forgot to even
offer them coffee or food."

This is who Rosa Parks was.

And in fact, Rosa Parks,
when she was sitting on that bus that day,

waiting for those
police officers to arrive

and not knowing what was going
to happen to her,

she was not thinking about
Martin Luther King,

who she barely knew.

She was not thinking about
nonviolence or Gandhi.

She was thinking about her grandfather,

a gun-toting, take-no-mess grandfather.

That's who Rosa Parks was thinking about.

My son was mesmerized by Rosa Parks,

and I was proud of him
to see this excitement.

But then I still had a problem.

Because I still had to go his school

and address the issue with his teacher,

because I didn't want her
to continue to teach the kids

obviously false history.

So I'm agonizing over this,

primarily because I understand,
as an African-American man,

that whenever you talk
to whites about racism

or anything that's racially sensitive,

there's usually going to be a challenge.

This is what white sociologist
Robin DiAngelo calls "white fragility."

She argues that, in fact,

because whites have
so little experience being challenged

about their white privilege

that whenever even the most
minute challenge is brought before them,

they usually cry,

get angry

or run.

(Laughter)

And I have experienced them all.

And so, when I was contemplating
confronting his teacher,

I wasn't happy about it,

but I was like, this is a necessary evil

of being a black parent trying to raise
self-actualized black children.

So I called Elijah to me and said,

"Elijah, I'm going to set up
an appointment with your teacher

and try and correct this

and maybe your principal.

What do you think?"

And Elijah said,

"Dad, I have a better idea."

And I said, "Really? What's your idea?"

He said, "We have
a public speaking assignment,

and why don't I use
that public speaking assignment

to talk about debunking
the myths of Rosa Parks?"

And I was like,

"Well, that is a good idea."

So Elijah goes to school,

he does his presentation,

he comes back home,

and I could see something
positive happened.

I said, "Well, what happened, son?"

He said, "Well, later on in that day,

the teacher pulled me aside,

and she apologized to me
for giving that misinformation."

And then something else
miraculous happened the next day.

She actually taught
a new lesson on Rosa Parks,

filling in the gaps that she had left
and correcting the mistakes that she made.

And I was so, so proud of my son.

But then I thought about it.

And I got angry.

And I got real angry.

Why? Why would I get angry?

Because my nine-year-old son
had to educate his teacher

about his history,

had to educate his teacher
about his own humanity.

He's nine years old.

He should be thinking about
basketball or soccer

or the latest movie.

He should not be thinking about
having to take the responsibility

of educating his teacher,

his students,

about himself, about his history.

That was a burden that I carried.

That was a burden that my parents carried

and generations before them carried.

And now I was seeing my son
take on that burden, too.

You see, that's why Rosa Parks
wrote her autobiography.

Because during her lifetime,

if you can imagine,

you do this amazing thing,

you're alive and you're talking
about your civil rights activism,

and a story emerges

in which somebody is telling the world

that you were old and you had tired feet

and you just were an accidental activist,

not that you had been activist
by then for 20 years,

not that the boycott
had been planned for months,

not that you were not even the first
or the second or even the third woman

to be arrested for doing that.

You become an accidental activist,
even in her own lifetime.

So she wrote that autobiography
to correct the record,

because what she wanted
to remind people of

was that this

is what it was like

in the 1950s

trying to be black in America

and fight for your rights.

During the year, a little over a year,
that the boycott lasted,

there were over four church bombings.

Martin Luther King's house
was bombed twice.

Other civil rights leaders' houses
were bombed in Birmingham.

Rosa Parks's husband
slept at night with a shotgun,

because they would get
constant death threats.

In fact, Rosa Parks's mother
lived with them,

and sometimes she would stay
on the phone for hours

so that nobody would call in
with death threats,

because it was constant and persistent.

In fact, there was so much tension,

there was so much pressure,
there was so much terrorism,

that Rosa Parks and her husband,
they lost their jobs,

and they became unemployable

and eventually had to leave
and move out of the South.

This is a civil rights reality

that Rosa Parks wanted to make sure
that people understood.

So you say, "Well, David,
what does that have to do with me?

I'm a well-meaning person.

I didn't own slaves.

I'm not trying to whitewash history.

I'm a good guy. I'm a good person."

Let me tell you
what it has to do with you,

and I'll tell it to you
by telling you a story

about a professor of mine,
a white professor,

when I was in graduate school,
who was a brilliant, brilliant individual.

We'll call him "Fred."

And Fred was writing this history
of the civil rights movement,

but he was writing specifically
about a moment

that happened to him in North Carolina

when this white man shot this black man
in cold blood in a wide-open space

and was never convicted.

And so it was this great book,

and he called together
a couple of his professor friends

and he called me to read a draft of it
before the final submission.

And I was flattered that he called me;

I was only a graduate student then.

I was kind of feeling myself a little bit.
I was like, "OK, yeah."

I'm sitting around amongst intellectuals,

and I read the draft of the book.

And there was a moment in the book

that struck me as being
deeply problematic,

and so I said,

"Fred," as we were sitting around
talking about this draft,

I said, "Fred, I've got a real problem
with this moment that you talk

about your maid in your book."

And I could see Fred get a little
"tight," as we say.

He said, "What do you mean?
That's a great story.

It happened just like I said."

I said, "Mmm ... can I give you
another scenario?"

Now, what's the story?

It was 1968.

Martin Luther King
had just been assassinated.

His maid, "domestic" --
we'll call her "Mabel,"

was in the kitchen.

Little Fred is eight years old.

Little Fred comes into the kitchen,

and Mabel, who he has only seen
as smiling and helpful and happy,

is bent over the sink,

and she's crying,

and she's sobbing

inconsolably.

And little Fred comes over to her
and says, "Mabel, what is wrong?"

Mabel turns, and she says,

"They killed him! They killed our leader.
They killed Martin Luther King.

He's dead! They are monsters."

And little Fred says,

"It'll be OK, Mabel.
It'll be OK. It'll be OK."

And she looked at him, and she says,
"No, it's not going to be OK.

Did you not hear what I just said?

They killed Martin Luther King."

And Fred,

son of a preacher,

looks up at Mabel, and he says,

"But Mabel, didn't Jesus
die on the cross for our sins?

Wasn't that a good outcome?

Maybe this will be a good outcome.

Maybe the death of Martin Luther King
will lead to a good outcome."

And as Fred tells the story,

he says that Mabel
put her hand over her mouth,

she reached down
and she gave little Fred a hug,

and then she reached into the icebox,

and took out a couple Pepsis,

gave him some Pepsis

and sent him on his way
to play with his siblings.

And he said,

"This was proof that even in the most
harrowing times of race struggle

that two people could come together
across racial lines

and find human commonality

along the lines of love and affection."

And I said, "Fred, that is some BS."

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Fred was like,

"But I don't understand, David.
That's the story."

I said, "Fred, let me ask you a question."

I said, "You were
in North Carolina in 1968.

If Mabel would've went to her community --
you were eight years old --

what do you think the eight-year-old
African-American children

were calling her?

Do you think they called her
by her first name?"

No, they called her "Miss Mabel,"

or they called her "Miss Johnson,"
or they called her "Auntie Johnson."

They would have never dared
call her by her first name,

because that would have been
the height of disrespect.

And yet, you were calling
her by her first name

every single day that she worked,

and you never thought about it."

I said, "Let me ask you another question:
Was Mabel married?

Did she have children?

What church did she go to?

What was her favorite dessert?"

Fred could not answer
any of those questions.

I said, "Fred, this story
is not about Mabel.

This story is about you."

I said, "This story made you feel good,

but this story is not about Mabel.

The reality is,

what probably happened was,
Mabel was crying,

which was not something
she customarily did,

so she was letting her guard down.

And you came into the kitchen,

and you caught her at a weak moment
where she was letting her guard down.

And see, because you thought of yourself
as just like one of her children,

you didn't recognize that you
were in fact the child of her employer.

And she'd found herself yelling at you.

And then she caught herself,

realizing that, 'If I'm yelling at him

and he goes back and he tells
his dad or he tells mom,

I could lose my job.'

And so she tempered herself,
and she ended up --

even though she needed consoling --
she ended up consoling you

and sending you on your way,

perhaps so she could finish
mourning in peace."

And Fred was stunned.

And he realized that he had actually
misread that moment.

And see, this is what
they did to Rosa Parks.

Because it's a lot easier to digest
an old grandmother with tired feet

who doesn't stand up because
she wants to fight for inequality,

but because her feet
and her back are tired,

and she's worked all day.

See, old grandmothers are not scary.

But young, radical black women

who don't take any stuff from anybody

are very scary,

who stand up to power

and are willing to die for that --

those are not the kind of people

that make us comfortable.

So you say,

"What do you want me to do, David?

I don't know what to do."

Well, what I would say to you is,

there was a time in which,

if you were Jewish, you were not white,

if you were Italian, you were not white,

if you were Irish, you were not white

in this country.

It took a while before the Irish,
the Jews and the Italians became white.

Right?

There was a time in which
you were "othered,"

when you were the people on the outside.

Toni Morrison said,

"If, in order for you to be tall,
I have to be on my knees,

you have a serious problem."

She says, "White America
has a serious, serious problem."

To be honest, I don't know
if race relations will improve in America.

But I know that if they will improve,

we have to take
these challenges on head on.

The future of my children depends on it.

The future of my children's
children depends on it.

And, whether you know it or not,

the future of your children
and your children's children

depends on it, too.

Thank you.

(Applause)