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Rosa Parks, dead at 92

Discussion in 'General Baptist Discussions' started by gb93433, Oct 25, 2005.

  1. blackbird

    blackbird Active Member

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    I admire Rosa----I would't have given up my seat for any man---white or black!! In fact, if I were a lady and I got on a bus and I discovered that the President of the United States were riding---and then I discovered that there were no seats left---and then I discovered that--ironically---the President was the only male person on the bus and the rest were female---I would then expect the President of the United States to get up and give me his seat---fine Gentleman as he should be!!

    Those white men ought to have been ashamed of themselves---just the thought of them "asking" her to give up her seat for a white man is totally ridiculous!!! Shame!

    Bro. David
     
  2. Gershom

    Gershom Active Member

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    To begin with, the very idea of a man asking a lady to give up her seat to him is absolutely ridiculous.
     
  3. Gershom

    Gershom Active Member

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    Bro. Davis,

    Yes, amen.
     
  4. TexasSky

    TexasSky Guest

    This is very dear to my heart.

    When Ronald Reagan was first elected President of the United States I was an election judge, and as one, allowed to appoint other election officials. In an effort to be as fair as I could be, I called the county and said, "I would like a Republican and Democrat, a woman and a man, and at least one person who is considered a miniority for race reasons."

    They sent me a gentle spirited black man who was the hardest worker I've ever known. He showed up early to help me set up the booths, he stayed until the boxes were delivered downtown, he was patient with voters who were not patient with election officials.

    During those long hours on election day we talked and talked. I called him for every election after that for years to come.

    Then one night he came to me and hugged me and said, "This will be the last time I can do this because I'm moving, but I wanted to tell you thank you. You made me a hero in my mother's eye and gave her a dream she never expected to see in her lifetime."

    He explained that his grandmother was a slave. His mother remembered the horrible treatment of blacks in this country in the decades between her birth and the civil rights movement. The time when the only jobs black citizens could get, no matter how educated they were, were manual labor, house cleaning, cooking, etc. The days when they had separate water fountains, and were prohibited from using public bathrooms. She had been denied the right to vote under Jim Crow law.

    He said that the night he told his family he was actually going to be paid to sit at a table and make sure that the elections were fair his mother cried, and praised God for fulfilling His promise to her people, and for allowing her to live long enough to see her son do this. They threw a party in his honor. He had accomplished something that their family had not believed possible. He had proven, in their eyes, that blacks really were not second class citizens.

    You cannot imagine how that old man's speech made me feel. This celebration had taken place in 1980 people.

    Do I consider Ms. Parks a hero? Oh yes.
     
  5. Filmproducer

    Filmproducer Guest

    Amen Texas Sky! [​IMG]
     
  6. Gold Dragon

    Gold Dragon Well-Known Member

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    I'm not sure what you are trying to say here, but I do think Moses was wrong for killing the slave master. I think Moses knew it too.

    I've only heard good things about Rosa Parks. I'm interested in finding out why some consider her to be a dishonourable rebel. Can those who hold this position reasonably defend it by referencing her actions?
     
  7. bapmom

    bapmom New Member

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    speaking of people who caused a "ruckus", didn't the apostles ALL disobey the law of their land when told to stop preaching the gospel?

    I don't think Rosa killed the guy who expected her to give him her seat.....she just sat there. I betcha it was the "man" that caused the "ruckus".
     
  8. Mark Osgatharp

    Mark Osgatharp New Member

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    The Bible plainly teaches us to submit to the laws, even if they are unjust. The only exceptions are when the law commands us to do something against God's command.

    If the law says, "Don't preach the gospel" then I should preach the gospel anyway because that is what God commanded.

    If the law says, "All white males shall give up their bus seats upon demand by black females" then the only Christian thing I can do is just do it. The Bible does not say it is a sin for me to give up my bus seat to another person.

    Christianity is not about demanding our civil rights. It is about following the example of the meek and lowly Jesus who willingly suffered wrong.

    Much rather had I stand in Uncle Tom's shoes than Martin Luther King's on judgement day.

    And lest anyone accuse me of being a racist or of condoning discrimination, let me say that I think a man who would demand a woman to give him her bus seat just because she was black is a vermin deserving of the damnation of hell.

    Mark Osgatharp
     
  9. Gold Dragon

    Gold Dragon Well-Known Member

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    Do you hold that position to folks like Dr. Dino who refuses to pay taxes based on his theology?

    What law did Rosa Parks not submit to?

    The SCOTUS declared the segregated bus service to be unconstitutional. So who was not submitting to the law of the land in this scenario? Rosa or the bus service? Rosa may have disobeyed a local ordinance. But the local ordinance was in defiance to the constitution.

    [ October 26, 2005, 12:28 PM: Message edited by: Gold Dragon ]
     
  10. Johnv

    Johnv New Member

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    I had the privilege of meeting Rosa Parks about 15 years ago. She was a great lady. She shared with me her faith in Christ. You could see Jesus in her eyes. I'm not kidding!

    It's unfortunate that there are some who will not even have one kind thing to say about her in death, or be respectful enough to refrain from debating her at this time.

    She was a hero. Not just to others, but to me personally.
     
  11. Mark Osgatharp

    Mark Osgatharp New Member

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    I don't even know who "Dr. Dino" is. But if he is refusing to pay taxes then, yes, I say he defying the law and disobeying God.

    Mark Osgatharp
     
  12. Gold Dragon

    Gold Dragon Well-Known Member

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    I don't even know who "Dr. Dino" is. But if he is refusing to pay taxes then, yes, I say he defying the law and disobeying God.

    Mark Osgatharp
    </font>[/QUOTE]Dr. Dino is Kent Hovind, creator of Creation Science Evangelism
     
  13. TexasSky

    TexasSky Guest

    Gold Dragon,

    I think the murder was wrong - but I think the civil disobedience Moses displayed was mandated by God.
     
  14. Johnv

    Johnv New Member

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    He's a charlatain with a fake degree who has a history of improper handling of funds. Avoid this fake at all costs.
     
  15. RockRambler

    RockRambler New Member

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    Rosa Parks Web Page

    Rosa Parks was not the first woman in Montgomery to refuse to get out of her seat so a white man could be comfortable.

    "Rosa was aware...that in the last twelve months alone three African-American females had been arrested for the same offense. One incident made the newspapers in March; it even happened on the same bus line. Of four black passengers asked to surrender their seats in no-man's land, two refused--an elderly woman and fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin. 'I done paid my dime,' Colvin had said. 'I ain't got no reason to move.' The elderly woman got off the bus before police arrived. Colvin refused to move, so police dragged her, fighting and crying, to the squad car, where she was rudely handcuffed..."

    "Colvin was charged with violating the city segregation law, disorderly conduct, and assault. With the NAACP defending her, she was convicted but fined only for assault, the most absurd of the three trumped-up charges. It was a shrewd ruling; it sent a tough message to blacks while avoiding an NAACP appeal of a clearly unconstitutional law. Afterward, E.D. Nixon, former Pullman porter and [now] president of the local NAACP chapter, met with the indignant young Colvin to determine if she might make a strong plaintiff in a test case. But she had recently become pregnant, which spelled trouble; Nixon knew that Montgomery's church-going blacks would not rally behind an immature, unwed, teenaged mother who was also prone to using profanity."
    --From Black Profiles in Courage by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Alan Steinberg, pp.233-234.

    In this more complicated version of the story, Rosa Parks is no mere seamstress tuckered out from pressing pants. She has also been for many years a volunteer for the local chapter of the NAACP. She is, in fact, E.D. Nixon's secretary. She knows all about Claudette Colvin and the other women who have been arrested for refusing to give up their seats. She knows when she gets on that bus that E.D. Nixon is looking for a test case, a case he can take all the way to the Supreme Court. What Rosa doesn't know--not until bus driver James Blake, a man Rosa has despised ever since he threw her off the bus in a similar incident ten years earlier, yells, "All right, you niggers, I want those seats"--is that she is not going to be a secretary in the case, but the defendant.

    If the real Rosa is more politically aware than the mythical one, and if her action happens in context with a pre-existing situation rather than coming like a bolt out of the blue, does that make Rosa less of a hero? Of course not. If we help students understand the realities of the world in which Rosa lived, they can then see how real the dangers were that she faced. The real Rosa remembered how the murderers of Emmet Till were set free by an all-white jury just two months earlier, and how an NAACP activist in Mississippi was murdered just two weeks before she refused to give up her seat. The real Rosa knew her husband may have been right when she told him what she had done and he responded, "The white folks will kill you." The real Rosa was not surprised when she got fired from her job, and her husband too was fired from his job, all because she said no.

    But the most important difference between the myth and the reality of the Rosa Parks story lies in what happened after Rosa said no--the bus boycott. In the myth, it seems to happen as if by magic: Rosa gets off the bus, and all black America gets off the bus with her. The fact that her courage instantly inspires everyone seems at once a miracle and also the most natural thing in the world.

    It didn't necessarily work that way. Vernon Johns, the fiery black activist pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, who was succeeded in his ministry by Martin Luther King, Jr., once tried to start a bus boycott:

    "Johns, then in his sixties and frail, boarded a Montgomery bus and accidentally dropped the dime fare near the driver's feet. 'Uncle,' the driver threatened, 'get down and pick up that dime and put it in the box.' Johns snapped back, 'I've surrendered the dime. If you want it, all you have to do is bend down and pick it up.' The driver was surprised. He ordered Johns to pick up the dime or get thrown off the bus. Johns calmly turned to the busful of black passengers and suggested they all get off the bus with him, in protest. But no one moved; they were too afraid. Later, when telling [Ralph] Abernathy this story, Johns concluded disgustedly, 'Even God can't free people who act like that.'"
    --From Black Profiles in Courage by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Alan Steinberg, p.238.

    If Vernon Johns, pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and one of the best known and most respected black men in Montgomery, could not inspire a bus boycott, how could a mere seamstress? The answer is organization. What Johns did was spur-of-the-moment. What Rosa Parks did was something black activists had carefully planned. They didn't know who would come along to be the spark they needed, or when it would occur, but they knew what they would do when it did occur.

    Rosa Parks was arrested on a Thursday evening. Immediately, E.D. Nixon-- her friend, coworker, and fellow activist at the NAACP--was notified, and so was Fred Gray, the young African-American lawyer who would handle the case. Gray was the same lawyer who had previously agreed to handle Claudette Colvin's case if Nixon had chosen to carry that case forward. Nixon and Gray agreed that in Rosa Parks they had a solid citizen around whom the community could rally, and her long activism in the NAACP convinced them that she knew the importance of her case and possessed the courage and commitment the situation would require.

    Late that night, Gray phoned his friend Jo Ann Robinson, president of the 300-member Women's Political Council. Robinson started phoning other activists and they agreed that Rosa Parks was just the right sort of person--outwardly ordinary and mild-mannered, inwardly steadfast--around whom a bus boycott could be organized to protest the law. After making her phone calls, Robinson stayed up till dawn with a mimeograph machine, creating 52,500 fliers that would be distributed over the weekend to churches, schools, bars, stores, and private homes.

    The next morning, E.D. Nixon phoned Martin Luther King and other black ministers in Montgomery. He warned them that he wanted to take a segregation case to the Supreme Court, and asked them to organize the support of Montgomery's black church congregations. King, a young man new to Montgomery and to his congregation, was reluctant to make waves so early in his tenure, but Nixon and the other pastors convinced him that, as an outsider, he had the advantage of not having made any local enemies yet. King agreed to head the effort. He and the other ministers immediately began to use their congregations to mobilize public support for Rosa Parks. She would not be ignored. She would not be alone. Anything that happened to her would happen in the spotlight of public attention. Every black person in Montgomery would know her story.

    On Monday morning, when Rosa Parks walked into the courthouse, 500 supporters stood outside to cheer her. Monday evening, when Drs. King and Abernathy arrived at the special boycott meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, they found 4000 people jammed into the church and crowded onto the lawns and surrounding alleys and streets. And, thanks to the fliers, all day that Monday the buses ran empty of blacks.

    That was only the beginning. Organizers held two mass rallies every week to raise spirits and money, and arranged 350 carpools to provide 20,000 rides per day. What Rosa Parks did was a spontaneous act of courage, but the only reason her individual act made a difference was because activists organized countless other acts of support. That, according to Herbert Kohl, is the real story of Rosa Parks.
     
  16. Craigbythesea

    Craigbythesea Active Member

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    On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American, was ordered by a police officer to surrender her seat to a white man in order to obey an Alabama law requiring black passengers to surrender their seats to white passengers when the bus became too full for everyone to have a seat. She refused and said to the police officer, "Why do you push us around?" The police officer replied, "I don't know, but the law is the law—and you're under arrest."

    The behavior of Rosa Parks in this particular incident was exactly the kind of behavior that is expressly forbidden in Romans 13. Had the police officer ordered her to deny her faith in God or to blow up the bus and kill the passengers, then she would have had the obligation to obey God rather than men because God, in the Bible, has expressly forbidden such behavior. But the police officer simply ordered her to obey an Alabama law that does NOT conflict with any express commandment in the Bible. Rosa Parks defied the order of a “minister of God” for her good, and in doing so, she resisted an “ordinance of God.” To express this very simply, she sinned.

    Rom 13:1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
    Rom 13:2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
    Rom 13:3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:
    Rom 13:4 For he is the ministerof God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
    Rom 13:5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
    Rom 13:6 For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.
    Rom 13:7 Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour. (KJV, 1769)

    Let’s all remember that this was one particular incident in her life of 92 years, and that one incident did not make her a bad woman. But neither does her 92 years as a good woman change the fact that she sinned on Dec. 1, 1995, when she defied both man and God.

    [​IMG]
     
  17. Brother Ian

    Brother Ian Active Member

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    I think "Pioneer" is a better choice of words.

    Yes, she shook things up, but not as much as Jesus.
     
  18. Rachel

    Rachel New Member

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    Wow is all I can say.
     
  19. Filmproducer

    Filmproducer Guest

    The behavior of Rosa Parks in this particular incident was exactly the kind of behavior that is expressly forbidden in Romans 13. Had the police officer ordered her to deny her faith in God or to blow up the bus and kill the passengers, then she would have had the obligation to obey God rather than men because God, in the Bible, has expressly forbidden such behavior. But the police officer simply ordered her to obey an Alabama law that does NOT conflict with any express commandment in the Bible. Rosa Parks defied the order of a “minister of God” for her good, and in doing so, she resisted an “ordinance of God.” To express this very simply, she sinned.

    You seem to forget that this Alabama law was not constitutional in the first place. I honestly do not believe you would be of the same opinion if Christians were being treated like third class citizens. She was a hero, not just for African Americans, but for all Americans. Your criticisms in lieu of her death are disrespectful, imo.
     
  20. Gold Dragon

    Gold Dragon Well-Known Member

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    I agree. I commend you for being consistent with scripture even when it is unpopular. She broke an unconstitutional state law. The heroes of the American revolution were even worse since they didn't have a constitution to justify their actions.

    These would be interesting scenarios for the question, "Is sin ever right"?

    As you stated, none of this takes away from the rest of her life and how she is recognized for her courage.
     
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