Rosa Parks by Nikki Giovanni (2010)

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Giovanni was one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement who has won numerous awards. Her works’ topics focus on gender, the African American experience and social issues, children’s literature and critical commentary. Rosa Parks describes the important contributions people have made to the Civil Rights Movement. [1]

Poetry

This is for the Pullman Porters who organized when people said they couldn’t. And carried the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender to the Black Americans in the South so they would know they were not alone. This is for the Pullman Porters who helped Thurgood Marshall go south and come back north to fight the fight that resulted in Brown v. Board of Education because even though Kansas is west and even though Topeka is the birth- place of Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote the powerful “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” it was the Pullman Porters who whispered to the traveling men both the Blues Men and the “Race” Men so that they both would know what was going on. This is for the Pullman Porters who smiled as if they were happy and laughed like they were tickled when some folks were around and who silently rejoiced in 1954 when the Supreme Court announced its 9—0 decision that “sepa- rate is inherently unequal.” This is for the Pullman Porters who smiled and welcomed a fourteen-year-old boy onto their train in 1955. They noticed his slight limp that he tried to disguise with a doo-wop walk; they noticed his stutter and probably understood why his mother wanted him out of Chicago during the summer when school was out. Fourteen-year-old Black boys with limps and stutters are apt to try to prove themselves in dangerous ways when mothers aren’t around to look after them. So this is for the Pullman Porters who looked over that fourteen-year-old while the train rolled the reverse of the Blues Highway from Chicago to St. Louis to Memphis to Mississippi. This is for the men who kept him safe; and if Emmett Till had been able to stay on a train all summer he would have maybe grown a bit of a paunch, certainly lost his hair, probably have worn bifocals and bounced his grand- children on his knee telling them about his summer riding the rails. But he had to get off the train. And ended up in Money, Mississippi. And was horribly, brutally, inexcusably, and unac- ceptably murdered. This is for the Pullman Porters who, when the sheriff was trying to get the body secretly buried, got Emmett’s body on the northbound train, got his body home to Chicago, where his mother said: I want the world to see what they did to my boy. And this is for all the mothers who cried. And this is for all the people who said Never Again. And this is about Rosa Parks whose feet were not so tired, it had been, after all, an ordi- nary day, until the bus driver gave her the opportunity to make history. This is about Mrs. Rosa Parks from Tuskegee, Alabama, who was also the field secretary of the NAACP. This is about the moment Rosa Parks shouldered her cross, put her worldly goods aside, was willing to sacrifice her life, so that that young man in Money, Mississippi, who had been so well protected by the Pullman Porters, would not have died in vain. When Mrs. Parks said “NO” a passionate movement was begun. No longer would there be a reliance on the law; there was a higher law. When Mrs. Parks brought that light of hers to expose the evil of the system, the sun came and rested on her shoulders bringing the heat and the light of truth. Others would follow Mrs. Parks. Four young men in Greensboro, North Carolina, would also say No. Great voices would be raised singing the praises of God and exhorting us “to forgive those who trespass against us.” But it was the Pullman Porters who safely got Emmett to his granduncle and it was Mrs. Rosa Parks who could not stand that death. And in not being able to stand it. She sat back down. [2]

Author

Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni Jr. is an American poet, writer, activist, commentator. Giovanni gained fame in the late 1960s as one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement which was influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement. She has won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award, as well as being nominated for a Grammy Award for her poetry album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. [3]

Her first self-published volume Black Feeling Black Talk (1968) to New York Times best-seller Bicycles: Love Poems (2009), including the Emmy-award nominated The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection (2004). Giovanni’s recent publication include Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid (2013) and, as editor, The 100 Best African American Poems (2010). [4]

Racism Issue

A prose poem is a segment of text that is not separated by line breaks and white space, this is used to convey a lot of information. The same way as in Giovanni’s Rosa Parks, not only to make sure the reader understands the political issue, but also give awareness of the history of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the white bus. People may know the story about Pullman porters, Emmett Till, and Rosa Parks separately, while in fact the story about them is linked.

In Rosa Parks, Giovanni parallels the Civil Rights movement reality: the never ending fight for equality. The repetition of "This is for _____ who . . . " reminding the reader repeatedly who they are following: the Pullman porters, the men who kept them safe, Emmett Till, the mothers, Rosa Parks. This is to keep the poem as precise as possible, as well as to highlight who is important. The emphasis is not on the white oppressors and murders, rather this is about the Black people who live in big turn points.

Not only packed with emotions and messages, this poem also packed with a lot of information. Though the title used in this poem is “Rosa Parks”, readers do not encounter the name from the first until the very end of the poem. Choosing the historical figure and writing about their accomplishment. [5]

References

  1. Rosa parks. Common Lit. Retrieved January 15, 2021
  2. Poetry and the Civil Rights Movement. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved January 15, 2021
  3. Nikki Giovanni. Wikipedia. Retrieved January 15, 2021
  4. Nikki Giovanni. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved January 15, 2021
  5. Brooks, Savannah.Weekly Prompt: Rosa Parks. Loft. September 29, 2020. Retrieved January 15, 2021