This commentary about possibly the true Rosa Parks is not to ridicule, insult, or belittle, but to clarify some very important facts that have gone unwarranted by millions of people in America.

According to the book by Ralph David Abernathy, And The Walls Came Tumbling Down, on page 131, first paragraph, and I quote:

“Most accounts of the Montgomery bus boycott began with the refusal of Rosa Parks to obey a bus driver’s order. As a matter of fact, two black women had
already been arrested earlier in the year. One of them, Claudette Colvin, a fifteen year old student, had been dragged from the bus and charged with assault and battery as well as failure to comply with Jim Crow laws governing public transportation.”

Rosa Parks’s character, that of a soft-spoken courteous woman, and slight in stature, sounds unlike the person who turned out to be defiant, emboldened, and fearless in the face of white oppressors, capable of unlawfully lynching her without sanction. After reading Mr. Abernathy’s book over and over again for the past 15 years and doing research I came to the conclusion that the NAACP planned the whole event to test the segregation laws in Montgomery Alabama in the federal courts. But why Rosa Parks? What was so special about her?
These two questions puzzled me time and again and left me blank of mind. I just could not see how Rosa Parks’s appearance on the bus that day could have been random. Her character was totally out of context with her behavior.

Thereafter I peered into the Plessy v. Ferguson case. What was I looking for? I was after any evidence that would shed light on why Rosa Parks. In Plessy v. Ferguson we learn that Homer Plessy was a Octoroon, a light-skinned Creole. That is, he had only one eighth black blood. In fact, Plessy was genetically a white man. But the owners of the train wanted the strict letter of the law to be followed. Blacks and whites period would occupy separate cars, but whites alone would ride in luxury and style.

When we examine the case microscopically we apprehend that Plessy’s image, that of a near white Anglo-Saxon, rather than a charcoal-black African, raised eyebrows after he lost his case in the Supreme Court. But the choice to use Plessy by influential Creole Civic Louisiana businessmen could have been due to his white features in order to attract white sentiment. However, neither white sentiment nor the fourteenth Amendment, the separate but equal clause, did Plessy any good.

This strategy to use Plessy because of his skin color is Mulattoism. And was not novel. White American men since slavery began in 1609 favored Mulattoes over the darker black claiming they were inferior to the Mulattoes, who possessed
white blood and undoubtedly were superior in intelligence as a result. And this philosophy paved the way for whites to better control blacks by dividing the race on intra-racial grounds.

Once I understood the context and depths of this last paragraph I realized some very important points about Rosa Parks. Miss Parks great grandfather was Scottish and Irish and probably unmixed with African blood. So Rosa had features
that would mirror Anglo-Saxon features. In which case they would appeal to white women and men socially and biologically by design.

There is evidence that Homer Plessy was part of a planned challenge to the 1890 Louisiana Separate Car Act by the Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law by a small group of black professionals in New
Orleans. And historically, we can draw inferences from this, or repeat its social paradigm should the same or similar
circumstances arise in our own time. This I believe is why Rosa Parks was chosen. I say that for several reasons: 1. She worked for the NAACP. Coincidence? 2. She was a Mulatto. 3. She was fair skinned. 4. She possessed features resembling Anglo-Saxon women. In addition, the same set of reasons, used to harness Plessy were at work here. To challenge Montgomery Alabama’s Jim Crow Laws.

Now, let us go one step further with this argument. Another black individual had also challenged the white racist establishment in the south before Rosa Parks. It was Bayard Rustin in 1942, who boarded a Tennessee bus in the
white section, and was beaten for his insolence and refusal to be seated in the black section. However in Rustin’s case and because he was a devout homosexual, the NAACP categorized him as the wrong image. Plus Bayard was dark-skinned, and his features were more African than European.

Moreover, Bayard Rustin challenged southern segregationists on his own. It is a wonder they did not kill him. And at the time lynching was prosaic. You could say the NAACP discriminated against Mr. Rustin on the grounds he was homosexual. Which is a contradiction. If they were for equal rights for all, than why exclude the accomplishments of Mr. Rustin, in spite of his homosexuality.

This then helped me to apprehend the truth about Rosa Parks. She was a pawn. But a pawn with the right appeal that the NAACP looked for to undertake their political ploy. It was her near white color and Scottish-Irish background that they sought to exploit, and above all, she was not a convicted felon as Bayard Rustin. But NAACP’s legal strategy was no different than
the Louisiana businessmen and Homer Plessy of some 70 years
earlier. In contrast, Bayard Rustin was born in Pennsylvania and not the south. Wrong region. Northern black boys were not slaves; and slavery was the issue, and the South was the focus.

So Bayard Rustin’s efforts were undermined. In fact, they were cast totally aside. And as a result my liberalism and thirst for truth will not allow me to honor Rosa Parks because of this, because Parks’s challenge of the white segregationists was dishonest. It hinged on Mulattoism, not an honest act of
altruism as Bayard displayed, but an act based on racial class distinction determined by white rule, and accepted by both southern and northern black leaders. And this, in and of itself is racism, but intra-racial racism to be exact. And that is exactly why I’m convinced Rosa Parks was chosen.