WIS News 10 - Columbia, South Carolina | MIA President Johnnie Carr on Rosa Parks and the Memorial Service

MIA President Johnnie Carr on Rosa Parks and the Memorial Service

The following remarks were given by Montgomery Improvement Association President on Tuesday, October 25th at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church:

"I want to thank each of you that has come to join us today. I am Johnnie Carr, the President of the Montgomery Improvement Association, and today we have come together to honor the memory of my sister and hero of the civil rights struggle - Mrs. Rosa L. Parks.

As you are aware, the Montgomery Improvement Association stood by Rosa Parks almost 50 years ago when she made her stand. We thought that it was only fitting that our organization would defend her here in Montgomery, Alabama - fighting for strength and honor.

We will hold our service this Friday (October 28th) at 11 a.m. at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist church here in Montgomery, Alabama.

Our ceremony will be a religious ceremony filled with stories about her life and with songs which inspired all of us through our struggle for equality.

Joining us will be attorneys who represented Mrs. Parks and Dr. King and leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association.

We were with her in 1955 and many of the individuals who were part of the movement at that time (will be here.) And I'm here to say that there will be a lot of persons, and I'm sure of that, because I have had more than 50 telephone calls from other groups, media, and whatever about Rosa Parks.

Too much cannot be said about Rosa Parks and the thing that she did right here in Montgomery, Alabama.

Rosa Parks and I went to school together when were were girls at a private girls' school, right here in Montgomery, that was built by white teachers who came from the North and built a school for black girls here.

I met Rosa Parks there in the school. We were there in the 5th, 6th, and 7th grades at this particular school.

It closed in 1927 and Rosa Parks and I both went our separate ways. We didn't get back together again until we were both grown and had married and had families.

But we have been together ever since. I have a photo that shows it wasn't 1955 when Rosa Parks and I started working for civil rights in our community, but long before that with Dr. E.D. Nixon, another person in our community that was doing what we thought we should do to try to help to make things better.

As most of you might remember, or might have heard, everything in Montgomery, Alabama was segregated. There was no integration of any kind for our community.

I could not go to your churches; I could not go to your schools; and you could not attend mine.

So, these are the things we were fighting so hard to correct. We knew that it was wrong because we were being denied the very things in life that everyone should have had an opportunity to have a part of - jobs, political work, and whatever you want to name that human beings should be a part of.

I'm glad to say that Rosa Parks and I did not just meet in '55, but we had met a long time before then. (I have) a photo of the NAACP back in the 40's. These are things I would like the world to know.

And (there's) another thing I would like to make straight while we are here. Rosa Parks was not guided.  It has been said that somebody told Rosa 'If you stay on the bus and don't get off , we will back you up.'

Rosa Parks' own initiative and her tiredness of the way that we had been treated (dictated her actions.) You read her book and you find out that that wasn't the first time that she'd had an encounter on a City Line bus.

So for those reasons, Rosa was not tired physically so much as she was tired mentally....

I would say to the world, to anybody else who will ask me, Rosa Parks was a very quiet, unassuming, to my idea, young woman. When we were in school together as classmates she never was noisy, to say too much. But I can tell you this, anything she put her hand to was always thorough and very dignified.

And even in this (Mrs. Parks not giving up her seat), I can think about when she said to the bus driver after he said, 'I'm gonna arrest you.' She looked at him and said, 'You may do that.'

And I'm sure most people would not have done that. You would have had an angry attitude and you would have done something else. But because of her attitude and because of her manner of living, she was always that way.

And God having sent Martin Luther King here to be our leader when we started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, he (King) taught the leadership fighting for desegregation (to fight) with non-violence and with love and that was the key to the success of the movement.

So I say to you today, as we come to memorialize her and would have a ceremony in her honor and her memory, we cannot say too much about Rosa Parks.

Because I hope that on this date, each of you will try to be present and try to do what you can to try to help to make the memorial service what it should be.

We don't want it to be just a ceremony. We want it to have a religious connotation, background, because the movement was really born in a church.

This church here had much, much to do with the movement when it was organized and I would like for it to go out in the memory of Rosa Parks in a religious atmosphere.

What we would do here, people will be doing things in other places, but what we do here we would like it to be geared towards that.

Because Dr. King, a leader of our community as well as a leader of the bus boycott at that time, went on to not only be the leader here; but, he became the leader everywhere and we know that was because of his religious beliefs, what he believed in.

So, we would like for this ceremony to be very much geared with whatever we do towards that. And then I would like for us not to stop with the ceremony we are going to have here and whatever will be done at other places.

I want each person to look down in your own mind and your own heart and see what you would like to do to help make things better. Because, as I have said a many time, we have come a long way in our struggle, bet we still have a long way to go. Everything is not all right.

Keep that in mind. Keep in mind yourself,'what am I doing personally to try to make this a better world.'

News people I fuss at you a lot of times and say some things about you because I think sometimes you get news too quick and I don't like what you say.....I hope you will really do a good news story about it and tell it like it is and say the things that are really important that our young people need to know. The past they need to know; the present they need to know; and they need to know how to work for the future and each of us can do that in our own way.

Rosa Parks and I and our lives have had a long, long time to be together. She celebrated her 92nd birthday in February and I celebrated my 94th birthday in January, so we were right close together. I'm two years her senior, but we've been together and thank God for the opportunity that I had to have Rosa as a friend and to know her and to know the things that she had done.

She lit the match; she struck the match that lit the fire that started things a burning.

A few years ago, the President of Huntingdon College spoke to one of our groups and this is what he said, 'A woman sat down and the world turned around.'

And I think you can agree with that. A woman sat down and the world turned around.

I was in Berlin, Germany in 1997 and they were over there singing "We Shall Overcome."

So it's all over the world, everywhere. There's a lot going on.

But right here in Montgomery, what we want to do is to really give Rosa Parks her due here in Montgomery. And I'm looking at persons now, who are sitting in our audience, that were here then.  Their parents were here and they're here now. I just want you to pick up the mantle and carry on and help to make the future even better than the past.

Thank you so much for coming and let us have a great celebration for Rosa Parks on Friday at 11 O'Clock here at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church."