American Views Abroad

 
The death of Rosa Parks was highlighted on German radio all morning. It has been painful reading her obituary in various US newspapers. Americans at home tend to dance on raw eggs when it comes to race relations and recalling history. In its obit today the LA Times describes the Jim Crow laws so:

'....But black bus passengers had to follow certain rules. The first 10 seats were reserved for whites, even if no whites got on the bus. Blacks had to sit in the back rows or, if those were filled, stand. If the white section filled up, some drivers ordered blacks to give up their seats. Bus drivers determined the rules. Some drivers made black passengers board through the front door to pay their fare, then re-enter through the back door to find a seat. If they were unlucky, the bus would take off before they had a chance to get back on.'

In The New York Times:

'....On Montgomery buses, the first four rows were reserved for whites. The rear was for blacks, who made up more than 75% of the bus system's riders. Blacks could sit in the middle rows until those seats were needed by whites. Then the blacks had to move to seats in the rear, stand or, if there was no room, leave the bus. Even getting on the bus presented hurdles. If whites were already sitting in the front, blacks could board to pay the fare but then they had to disembark and re-enter through the rear door.'

The LA Times informs us that in 1943 when Parks boarded a bus in order to go to register to vote, instead of stepping off to re-enter through the rear door after paying her fare, she walked down the aisle, straight to the back of the bus. The bus driver that day who ordered her off the bus to re-board through the rear door was the same one who had her arrested when she refused to give up her seat in the middle of the bus to a white man in 1955.

My parents were both born in New York City and both from families who had emigrated from Czechoslovakia in the very late 1800s. My father was in the US Navy during WW II and on the day before the Normandy invasion in 1944, the minesweeper he was serving on was blown to bits off the coast of Cherbourg. He was the only one to survive, was picked up by the British, and made it home to marry my mother in August 1944. He was then sent down to the heart of the Deep South for special training for the war in the Pacific. It was my mother's first and only encounter with rural southern living and one day they took a bus somewhere. She was amazed, startled actually as she later recalled, at why the blacks were jammed into the back of the bus. She turned to my father and asked him why they didn't take one of the free seats where they were sitting. At that point the bus driver stopped the bus and threw my parents off. He threw them off in the middle of nowhere complaining vehemently about damned Yanks.

This one family story surely doesn't stand alone. We know from history books that German POWs were treated far better than US blacks, even those in uniform, back in the 1940s. In Freedom From Fear -- The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, David M. Kennedy reports on page 771:

'Northern blacks especially resented their first encounters with formal segregation in the South. All blacks chafed at the gratuitous humiliations that military life inflicted on them -- from lack of access to recreational facilities to segregated blood plasma supplies to the galling spectacle of German prisoners of war seated at southern lunch counters that refused to serve Negro soldiers. Worst of all, the army persisted in ghettoizing Negro recruits in all-black outfits and assigning them almost exclusively to noncombat roles.'
- posted by Gloria @ 6:14 PM