(Originally posted at
http://myleftwing.com )
Living in Ann Arbor (not far from Detroit), I was able (after finding a neighbor to give me a ride) to take advantage of that geographical proximity and leave somewhat after 1:30 a.m. this morning to go to the Charles H. Wright Museum Of African American History in downtown Detroit, to attend the public viewing of Rosa Parks. (I was busy earlier that day and day before, with consequences you'll shortly read about.)
I had also thought about attending her funeral, though, among other things, I was concerned that I might take away a space from someone of Rosa Parks' own generation who wanted to attend, considering the church's limited number of seats. So I decided just to go to the viewing.
Her viewing stretched from 9 p.m. Monday to 5 a.m. Wednesday (today), before her casket was taken to the Greater Grace Temple--City of David, where the funeral is still going on right now.
(more below fold)
(Some half-hour ago I saw Aretha Franklin's performance there, while watching CNN. ...and "update", I just now, as of this writing, saw on CNN, Al Sharpton saying that Rosa Parks was a model of female dignity who made her people respected, rather than the "pimp me out---ho's" model often misapplied to black women today. Preach it.)
Arriving at 2:30 a.m. or so, I saw an immense line, more immense than I had hoped or imagined. And, cleverly enough, I had brought no headgear either for that cold weather. Well, I thought, at least I'd gotten there several hours before 5 a.m., so I'd soon have the comfort of having been able to pay my last respects to Mrs. Parks.
That comfort, as well as bodily comfort and heat, began to evaporate as I experienced the full extent of that line for the next several hours. I started on the west side of one block, then went down the long north side of another. What I then noticed, with some small horror, was that I could now see an immense loop 5 lines deep; i.e., after going down the east side of the block, one had to enter a maze that went back west almost a full block length, then east, then west, then east, and finally west again, 5 huge coils of a snaking line, before one could get to the "promised land" of the final stretch--without loops--going southward and upward into the museum.
After 4:30 a.m. as I was close to that "promised land", there appeared an ominous sign; police were handing out memorial cards with a picture of Rosa Parks, to people behind me up in one of the northern coils of the loop, as if it were a consolation prize for those who wouldn't be let in. I felt rather sorry for those people behind me, who might not get in.
I began to feel rather sorrier as I was finally out of the 5-deep loop and into the final stretch up the hill, and police came to pass out those memorial cards to ME and the people I was with. This couldn't really be happening, could it, after two dark frozen hours and in the very last stretch, with the museum right at the top of the small hill in front of me? I took a card anyway.
About halfway up the hill, I heard a policeman say that the viewing had ended. Apparently it was 5 a.m. already, and they were fully sticking to schedule, regardless of how long people had waited.
There was not a riot, but there were many angry people, who soon started chanting "One more hour! One more hour!" It was to no avail. The police started clustering more thickly, and soon asked people to "clear the area", as the disappointed would-be viewers themselves clustered around the closed glass doors. We could see some of the round funeral garlands from behind, and the military, police, and mortuary personages walking around, but we could not see Rosa herself, for whom we had sacrificed many hours and degrees of body temperature to come to show our affections for one last time.
But people are not always deterred. Folks hung around for a while, and while the doors were not opened (except to allow police in and out; and the police were civil and friendly, at least), there was a crowd I saw down the hill to the southwest, on the west side of the museum. The roadway there had a white hearse with the name "Swanson" in silver filigree on it, and it was apparently here where the casket would be boarded into the vehicle and the procession would start.
This time, the organizers were not on schedule; it wasn't at 6 a.m. but more like 6:15 before the casket came out. So, as we waited in the increasing cold, our efforts were not in vain, and not only the multiple reporters and cameramen, but also the crowd, got the fill of their eyes and their cameras both.
First came out multiple garlands, seemingly the round ones we'd seen in our vain peering through the museum doors earlier. Then, small bursts of varied personnel. Finally, though, there were two military men in berets, walking very slowly forwards swinging their arms, followed a ways back by the bearers of the casket.
There was much emotion. An African-American woman behind me talked to a reporter, saying that her son, who loomed up to the right of his shorter mother, had the chance to experience and know history, his history, by being there. I saw another woman weeping, and if I had looked carefully, would probably have seen other people weeping as well. Before, during, and after the loading of the casket into the Swanson hearse, many people said, "Bye, Rosa", "We love you, Rosa", and similar sentiments, and also touched the hearse itself. Then the assembled police motorcycles roared off, and the procession moved. But that was not all.
The procession moved off very slowly at first, as the organizers put things together and readied themselves, perhaps. Therefore, we were all able to follow these very beginnings of the funeral procession for the first block, as the many vehicles inched deliberately forward. A man, who had been waving around a newspaper front page with Rosa Parks' picture several hours ago at us while we were in line, now appeared unbidden in front of the procession, waving the newspaper, declaiming, and being the object of attention for countless reporters and snapping, flashing cameras. He was no Aretha Franklin, surely, but in his own way, with his own performance, he was showing his own brand of R-E-S-P-E-C-T to Parks. Police eventually almost shoved him aside, as he moved off to the curb, but he certainly had everyone's attention for a while.
So what lessons are here? One person's small travails in a viewing line are probably not of much consequence; and I doubt I can match Hunter's front-page eloquence about the meaning of Rosa Parks. However, some things spring to mind.
One is very obvious: the heartfelt popular love of Rosa Parks. It's not just the celebrities showing up to her funeral (maybe with their own agendas in mind...), it's about the people. That line, after 2 in the morning in downtown Detroit in late-Fall low temperature, was gargantuan, and that says so much. (Though largely African American, it was not monolithically so, and I saw people of many different backgrounds.)
Another is the value of persistence: not so much for me, as for the people even further ahead in the line than I was, and who still didn't get into the actual open-casket viewing. Those who waited an additional hour-plus did indeed get a viewing, on the west side of the museum, although one with a closed casket. And they got to see the very start of the funeral procession. Neither Moses nor his disciple Martin Luther King got further (in this life) than the mountaintop looking into the promised land, just as the crowd got partway up the hilltop and then couldn't get into the museum; but good things come to those who wait in patience.
Finally, there is the value of popular action. Whatever you think of Jesse Jackson, he has a way with the word, and he did well by saying that Rosa Parks "wove glory with grace". Parks was, among other things, a seamstress, and Jackson's metaphor works nicely. Though, like the man waving the Rosa Parks picture around at the front of the funeral procession, we may not be at the top of society, or an invited part of any procession, we can certainly make our voices heard, just as Parks did by refusing to give up her bus seat, although few of us may be as influential as she. The Internet is not called the "Web" for nothing, after all; people on this site, and elsewhere, have been "weaving" well for years now, doing their own part to mix glory with grace to the good of their country and community. One Web activity you can do in particular at this time, if you like, is to donate to Rosa Parks' foundation. Of course, there many other ways to contribute to Rosa Parks' work; and it is some comfort to be part of a community, the one reading right now, which has so contributed, and continues to contribute. In fact, that kind of popular, and personal, action is one reason that the work of Rosa Parks will never really die.