3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

to you, that did more good than nonviolence ;' she explained. "Most of the black people
in Montgomery had similar feelings . . . To this day I am not an absolute supporter of
nonviolence in all situations:' In recounting her famous arrest, she included a most
telling remembrance, which reveals her thoughts on self-defense . Thirty-seven years after
the bus driver instructed her to give up her seat and "make it light on yourself;' she
rcmember+ed :
I could not sa how standing up was going to "make it light" for me . The
more we gave in and complied, the worse they treated us .
I thought back to the time when I used to sit up all night and didn't slap,
and my grandfather would have his gun right by the tircplace, or if he had his onehorse
wagon going anywhere, he always had his gun in the back of the wagon .
People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't
true . I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a
working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being
old then . I was forty-two . No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in .
The driver ofthe bus saw me still sitting there, and he asked was I going to
stand up. I said, "No." He said, "Well, I'm going to have you arnested:' Then I
said, "You may do that."~~
Mrs . Parks included the seemingly random remembrance of her grandfather's gun in her
recollection of her arrest because, in her mind, civil rights and self-defense were
indistinguishable . In considering her own activism, she could not help but think of her
grandfather and his preparedness to defend himself and his family . "Dr. King used to say
that black people should receive brutality with love, and I believed that was a goal to
work for," she stated. "But I couldn't reach that point in my mind at all, even though I
~Rosa Parks with Jim Haskins, Rosa Parks : MyS~ (New York: Dial Books, 1992),
174175 .
~~~, 115-116.
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