15448: Rosapark Drives Away From A Busload Of Trouble…

 

Adweek reported French advertising agency Rosapark changed its name to Rosa Paris after taking heat for displaying cultural cluelessness. The White leaders of the firm also pledged to set up a diversity committee and more inclusive recruitment campaign. Of course they did. They undoubtedly hope to close the Booker T. on the scenario.

 

French Ad Agency Rosapark Changes Name to Rosa Paris a Year After Facing Criticism

 

The firm’s white leadership has claimed the name was unrelated to civil rights icon Rosa Parks

 

By Stephen Lepitak

 

Havas-owned creative agency Rosapark has rebranded to Rosa Paris, following through on a pledge made a year ago amid criticism from diversity advocates who felt the agency’s white leadership was using a name referencing U.S. civil rights icon Rosa Parks without demonstrating actual racial inclusiveness.

 

In the wake of 2020’s murder of unarmed Minneapolis resident George Floyd by police, advocacy group 600 & Rising’s co-founder Nathan Young tweeted an image of the agency’s leadership standing in front of the name Rosapark and called it “advertising’s race problem in one image.”

 

As more voices joined in the criticism, the agency—which has long claimed its name is unrelated to Montgomery Bus Boycott initiator Parks—last June released a statement saying its leaders would be “rethinking the name of our agency.”

 

The agency was co-founded by Gilles Fichteberg, Jean-Patrick Chiquiar and Jean-François Sacco, who have said over the agency’s nearly decadelong life that the name was meant to reflect a combination of urban Paris lifestyle and skater culture, tinted with softness. In 2018, it was named Adweek’s International Agency of the Year.

 

Along with a new name, the agency has also revealed a new logo, symbolizing a rose, the petals of which form the letters of Rosa.

 

While the agency’s lengthy announcement of its new branding does not directly address criticisms around its similarity to Rosa Parks or lack of inclusive leadership, the agency did write that it had “measured the possible sense of appropriation that could be generated by [the] name of our agency, particularly on the American market and decided to rename the agency Rosa Paris in order to avoid any confusion.”

 

In 2020, the agency had more directly addressed its critics by issuing a statement that said: “We are aware of the various comments on social media related to the name Rosapark, and we would like to assure you we are taking them very seriously. We are sincerely sorry if the name of our agency, which we chose eight years ago, has caused any offense. In the current climate and in light of recent world events, we fully understand why.”

 

Alongside its visual and name changes, the agency has also announced it will set up a diversity committee and develop a more inclusive recruitment campaign.

15058: French Firm Moves To The Front Of The Culturally Clueless Bus.

Adweek reported a White advertising agency in France is rethinking its name—Rosapark—after getting trashed on Twitter. The founders claim they labeled the agency in 2012, completely oblivious to the similarity to civil rights icon Rosa Parks, which ultimately underscores their collective cultural cluelessness. To add comedic value, the company boasts having an “urban” personality. And while the place insists the name is spelled as one word, the website graphics display it as two words. Regardless, Rosaparks is now debating renaming itself. Hey, why not? If Land O’ Lakes dumped the Indian Maiden, PepsiCo is retiring Aunt Jemima and companies are reevaluating Rastus, Uncle Ben and Mrs. Butterworth, surely the French firm can do the right thing. Free and friendly advice: steer clear of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. Ditto Josephine Baker, despite her ties to France. Sorry, guys, the most appropriate monickers—Cracker Barrel and Cracker Jack—are already copyrighted.

 

French Agency Rosapark: ‘We Will Be Rethinking the Name of Our Agency’

 

Exclusive: Founders "fully understand" why the name is being scrutinized

 

By Minda Smiley

 

The founders of Havas-owned Rosapark are “rethinking” the agency’s name after facing criticism on Twitter earlier this week.

 

On Tuesday, Nathan Young, president of 600 & Rising and group strategy director at Periscope, tweeted an image of Rosapark’s founders—all of whom are white men—with the following comment: “Advertising’s race problem in one image.”

 

Young’s tweet prompted a response from someone named Louis Duroulle, who—according to LinkedIn—is an account director at Havas Paris. While Duroulle’s tweets have since been deleted, he essentially accused of Young of “trash talking” Rosapark:

Later that day, Young tweeted that he’d “had a conversation with U.S. leadership” at Havas. 

 

“I won’t disclose details, but I did speak to several issues of importance to our members and received assurance that U.S. diversity data would be forthcoming,” he tweeted. The members he’s referring to are those of 600 & Rising, a nonprofit Young founded alongside Bennett D. Bennett earlier this month that’s dedicated to advocating for Black people in the advertising industry.

 

In a statement sent to Adweek, the founders of Rosapark said they “fully understand” why the name is receiving criticism.

 

“We are aware of the various comments on social media related to the name Rosapark, and we would like to assure you we are taking them very seriously,” they wrote. “We are sincerely sorry if the name of our agency, which we chose 8 years ago, has caused any offense. In the current climate and in light of recent world events, we fully understand why.”

 

They also said they are “particularly sensitive to the issue of diversity in our industry.” According to the founders, Fichteberg—who earlier this year was named president of the Association of Communication Consulting Agencies’ advertising delegation—“has put diversity at the heart of his program, which aims to profoundly transform our industry in this area.” 

 

“In light of the above, we will be rethinking the name of our agency,” the statement concluded. “Please rest assured that we are fully committed to this subject.”

 

Since its inception in 2012, the founders of Rosapark—which was named Adweek’s International Agency of the Year in 2018—have maintained that the agency was not named after Rosa Parks, the civil rights activist who famously refused to give up her seat to a white person on a bus in Montgomery, Ala.

 

In 2015, French publication L’ADN interviewed Chiquiar and Fichteberg. In the article, they discuss how they landed on Rosapark, explaining they were inspired by parks, skateboarding culture and the desire to add a touch of “feminine softness,” hence “Rosa.” A translated version of their comments is below:

 

One of Rosapark’s prerogatives is to understand the times. What it brings, what technologies can be useful for brands, decipher trends … “We try to understand people better.” A philosophy that is embodied by the agency as a whole. “The agency’s name, Rosapark, translates what we are. Urban, city children … The city has a particular rhythm: How to create a parenthesis to the frenzy?” The idea of the park is becoming a “breathing lung.” The “K” translates the skateboarding culture of the founders. And to bring a touch of more feminine softness, Rosa goes to the park. For them, there was no question of having an acronym for their agency’s name. “It prevails over egos, personalities, willingness to put themselves forward. Here, we speak with one voice around Rosapark,” Chiquiar said.

 

The following year, former Rosapark creative director Mark Forgan said the agency wasn’t deliberately named after Parks in an interview with the Epica Awards.

 

“The guys wanted to name it after an urban location, and they liked the idea of ‘park.’ Then they felt that ‘rose park’ or ‘rosa park’ made it feel a little less masculine since they were three guys,” Forgan said. “The link to Rosa Parks was almost incidental.”

13479: Erin Johnson’s Essential Bullshit.

Campaign placed JWT Chief Communications Officer and Discrimination Whistleblower Erin Johnson at the No. 1 spot on “The 10 Essential Advertising People of the Year.” Gee, Johnson has become the Rosa Parks of diverted diversity in the advertising industry. According to Campaign, “The ad industry thought it had come a long way since the days of ‘Mad Men.’ But an explosive discrimination suit filed against one agency’s global CEO blew that pretty presumption out of the water this year and dragged an ugly truth out of shadows—the agency world can still be a very unfriendly place for women and minorities.” It’s amazing that Campaign considers itself a legitimate trade journal, as the average informed person recognizes quite clearly that the ad industry has not evolved much since the “Mad Men” era—and Madison Avenue is still chronically unfriendly to minorities. Sorry, but the discrimination that White women allegedly face is a veritable country club experience compared to the bullshit that minorities have endured. Yet Campaign—mirroring the rest of adland—has been quick to jump on the White women bandwagon, pushing true diversity to the back of the bus. Which sorta makes Johnson more like James F. Blake than Parks.

Campaign also claimed Johnson’s lawsuit created “ripple effects” including the dubious demands from General Mills and HP, as well as the launch of Free The Bid and the downfalls of Kevin Roberts and Alexei Orlov. Wow, Johnson is definitely a candidate for an ADCOLOR® Award. It’s a wonder her mighty efforts weren’t enough to catapult Hillary Clinton into the White House.

Of course, diverted diversity diva Cindy Gallop threw in her two cents, for which she’ll receive no compensation: “Erin Johnson’s outstanding bravery in filing a lawsuit against JWT when every other recourse had failed, emboldened women and people of color to speak up about the ingrained sexism and racism that has been holding our industry back for far too long. Our clients miss out on our best work when they miss out on the talent and creativity of women and POC. I hope this lawsuit changes that forever.” Well, bigger legal actions than this have failed to put a dent in diversity. And to be accurate, Johnson has not “emboldened…people of color to speak up” about anything—except to complain that true diversity is being ignored in favor of promoting White women.

The 10 Essential Advertising People of the Year: No. 1 Erin Johnson

Her explosive discrimination suit against JWT and its former CEO cracked open the conversation on gender bias and harassment.

By Eleftheria Parpis

For better or worse, 2016 was a landmark year in advertising. To mark its conclusion, Campaign US is highlighting 10 people we believe are essential to understanding how it all went down. Click here to see the list.

The ad industry thought it had come a long way since the days of “Mad Men.” But an explosive discrimination suit filed against one agency’s global CEO blew that pretty presumption out of the water this year and dragged an ugly truth out of shadows—the agency world can still be a very unfriendly place for women and minorities.

In March, Erin Johnson, an 11-year veteran of J. Walter Thompson and the agency’s chief communications officer, hit Gustavo Martinez, JWT and its holding company, WPP, with a bombshell lawsuit claiming the former CEO had “subjected Johnson and other employees to an unending stream of racist and sexist comments as well as unwanted touching and other unlawful conduct.” According to the complaint, Martinez routinely made references to rape in the office, directed at Johnson and other female staffers. And a video recording of Martinez, who resigned a week after the case was filed, was submitted to the court showing the executive making a joke about being raped “not in a nice way” at a company meeting.

The suit painted a picture of an agency leader who was openly hostile toward women, alleging that during a meeting Martinez once told an employee that a female executive needed to be “hogtied” and “raped into submission.” But it wasn’t only “bossy boss” women like Johnson who were on the receiving end of Martinez’s bad behavior, charged the suit. It was “black monkeys” and “fucking Jews,” too. As head of PR, Johnson had found it impossible to do her job, argued her lawyers. His repeated jokes about rape and his racist remarks were indicative of a hostile work environment, they argued, and it was also a potential PR nightmare that Johnson had attempted to avert by alerting company management, including the agency’s head of talent. And the agency failed to respond, they said.

With a 30-page suit filed in Manhattan federal court, Johnson threw the industry’s gender and diversity issues into stark relief and kick-started an industry-wide conversation that was long overdue. The fact that there aren’t enough women in leadership positions had been safely debated in recent years, but sexual harassment and discrimination was still a subject relegated to hallway whispers and locked behind closed doors.

There wasn’t an industry event in 2016 that didn’t address the subject of women in the workplace, noted Nancy Hill, president and CEO of the 4A’s. “The level of discourse this year increased tenfold,” she said. “There were several incidents that took place. Right, wrong, or indifferent, in terms of how you feel about them, they elevated the number of people who were willing to say what is going on in the industry isn’t right.”

Hill declined to specifically discuss Johnson or JWT, but she did take one holding company executive to task about the subject at the 4A’s Transformation conference in March. When asked on stage whether he believed the JWT case had exposed a larger industry problem, Maurice Levy, the CEO of Publicis Groupe, characterized it as an isolated mistake and Hill, following his appearance, made it clear she did not agree. “It’s one of the reason’s we did the study we did,” said Hill. “So nobody can point to any one incident and say it is an isolated incident. The feeling of the women in the industry is that it happens on a pretty regular basis.”

The study to which Hill refers found that more than 50 percent of women at ad agencies reported being sexually harassed at least once in their careers, and 58 percent of female creatives reported they experience sexual harassment “often.”

The conversations sparked by the Johnson case is a “silver lining,” said JWT New York CEO Lynn Power, during an Advertising Week panel about creative diversity programs. “This conversation that needs to happen. It’s a good thing that we’re talking about it.”

The ripple effects from Johnson’s filing reverberated throughout 2016. Diversity became the year’s dominant issue, with General Mills and HP, among others, eventually demanding that their agencies make more female and diversity hires. “Free the Bid” mobilized support behind female directorial and production talent. In July, Kevin Roberts’ career ended just days after he made controversial comments about women in the press, showing just how low tolerance on the issue had become. And at least one other discrimination lawsuit was filed against one more agency leader accused of atrocious behavior: In May, Greg Anderson filed a discrimination suit against former RAPP global CEO Alexei Orlov, claiming he was fired after he complained about the CEO’s racist and sexist conduct.

Nine months after Johnson filed her suit, her case is making its way through the federal legal system. Martinez, who denies the allegations, has moved back to Europe and continues to be employed by WPP. And Johnson, back at work at the agency after a leave of absence, has filed a motion for a temporary injunction, claiming she is suffering “highly visible punishment” in the office. While the judge, J. Paul Oetken, has yet to make a ruling as to whether to issue the order, he has denied WPP’s motion to dismiss and has moved the case on to the discovery phase in preparation for a trial.

Whichever way the case ends, one thing is clear: 2016 will be remembered as a pivotal year for women in advertising. “I have had more than one man say to me ‘I had no idea until this year how bad it was’ and ‘it’s opened my eyes,’” says Hill. “I’m hoping it’s gotten people to wake up and look around.”

Cindy Gallop, former agency executive and diversity champion, is hopeful that Johnson’s actions will have lasting impact. “Erin Johnson’s outstanding bravery in filing a lawsuit against JWT when every other recourse had failed, emboldened women and people of color to speak up about the ingrained sexism and racism that has been holding our industry back for far too long,” said Gallop, in an email. “Our clients miss out on our best work when they miss out on the talent and creativity of women and POC. I hope this lawsuit changes that forever.”

12720: C’MON WHITE MAN! Episode 41.

(MultiCultClassics credits ESPN’s C’MON MAN! for sparking this semi-regular blog series.)

The Adweek story detailing the Treasury Department’s plan to put a woman on the $10 bill included the following quote from Base Design Partner Geoff Cook: “What is so compelling about a woman being selected as the face of the new $10 bill is that it reflects the changing tide toward equality in America, opening the door to Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman and Caitlyn Jenner.” Really, dude? You’re going to put Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman in the same company with Caitlyn Jenner? Oh, and a quick peek at the Base Design lineup shows Parks and Tubman would have had a much tougher time landing a job there than Jenner. You can safely bet $10 on that.

C’MON WHITE MAN!

12483: Revealing Rosa Parks.

From The New York Times…

Who Rosa Parks Was, Not Just What She Meant

By Emmarie Huetteman

WASHINGTON — Newly released papers offer a look at the feisty spirit of the seemingly mild Rosa Parks, who helped set off one of the seminal events of the civil rights movement, the Montgomery bus boycott.

“I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment that I couldn’t take it anymore,” Mrs. Parks wrote.

The writing was part of thousands of her personal letters, photographs and other items that became accessible to researchers for the first time this week as the Library of Congress opened the largest collection of the civil rights icon’s documents.

“I think that she felt, perhaps, limited in a way by the iconic image of Rosa Parks as the woman who refused to give up her seat in the bus,” said Adrienne Cannon, an African-American history and culture specialist at the Library of Congress. “This significance that she had in the public sphere did not fully describe who she was, and I think that she perhaps wanted us to know her true self.”

About two dozen items will be on display to the public in March, with several also included through mid-September in the library’s exhibition “The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom.” The library also plans to digitize the collection over the 10 years it is on loan from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, hoping to post as much of it as possible online, depending on copyright negotiations.

Wayne State University has a smaller collection of Mrs. Parks’s manuscripts, which she gave to the college in 1976, focusing primarily on her work as an activist while living in Detroit.

After the death of Mrs. Parks in 2005, the collection, which includes about 7,500 manuscripts and 2,500 photographs, sat in storage at an auction house for years awaiting a buyer. A legal battle between her family and the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, which she founded, kept the documents from scholars.

Julian Bond, the civil rights activist and former chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., who gave a eulogy at Mrs. Parks’s memorial, called it “a crime” that it had taken so long for the papers to be released.

“She can now be seen as a whole person, a person fully engaged in the politics of her era, a person unafraid to associate with figures on the left, and a serious thinker,” he wrote in an email.

The papers, which include records revealing her trouble with ulcers and her struggle with poverty, also show how much Mrs. Parks suffered even as she earned the respect of so many, said Jeanne Theoharis, a political-science professor at Brooklyn College who wrote “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.”

Ms. Theoharis examined the collection last month while working on an article for the Library of Congress.

“There was just this really palpable sadness of getting to see what a toll and what a sacrifice, and that it’s not just for a year,” Ms. Theoharis said.

Items like the flashcard with the Spanish word for “pants” nestled in the copy of the New Testament she kept in her purse, and the letter to her brother musing about her interviews in publications like Life magazine — “I hope you get a copy,” she wrote — will also offer researchers a glimpse of her personality. Others, like a poll tax receipt, will give them a broader sense of the time.

“You just get to have this view of American history in the 20th century, just because she’s taking part in so much of it, she’s going to so many things, she’s involved in so many things,” Ms. Theoharis said. “She’s just kind of everywhere.”

It is a momentous occasion that even Mrs. Parks considered, according to thoughts captured in her careful cursive handwriting in one of the collection’s manuscripts.

“Is it worthwhile to reveal the intimacies of the past life?” she wrote. “Will the people be sympathetic or disillusioned when the facts of my life are told? Would they be interested or indifferent? Will the results be harmful or good?”

The collection joins countless others at the Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, which include the records of the N.A.A.C.P. and the National Urban League and the papers of Thurgood Marshall, Susan B. Anthony and Abraham Lincoln.

11761: BHM 2014—Capitol Hill.

From Roll Call…

Frederick Douglass Statue Figures Prominently in 2014 Black History Month

By Hannah Hess

This February marks the first time the Capitol has celebrated Black History Month with two statues of prominent African-Americans standing in its collection.

Prior to the Feb. 27, 2013, unveiling of a 9-foot, bronze-cast statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks in National Statuary Hall, there were no full-size sculptures of African-Americans among the 110 portrait statues cared for by the Architect of the Capitol for the Congress. The 2,100-pound work depicts Parks seated on a rock-like foundation, symbolizing her 1955 arrest for refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus.

Four months later, a 7-foot-tall bronze, bearded likeness of abolitionist Frederick Douglass was unveiled in the Capitol Visitor Center’s Emancipation Hall. Douglass stands in a formal double-breasted coat and bow tie, firmly grasping a lectern topped with an inkwell and quill pen, in homage to his incisive antislavery writing.

The two statues joined a bust of women’s rights advocate and abolitionist Sojourner Truth, displayed in Emancipation Hall since 2009, and a bust of Martin Luther King Jr., on display in the Rotunda since 1986, for a total of four sculptures of African-Americans commemorated by Congress for their defining roles in our national character.

For Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., the new additions are a great reason to invite her constituents into the Capitol to commemorate Black History Month. Norton has started offering tours of the four statues for District residents, culminating with the figure she holds in highest esteem. The journey ends in Emancipation Hall with Douglass — the first statue Congress has granted to a jurisdiction that’s not a state and won after a long fight by Norton and her allies on Capitol Hill.

“The reason we chose Frederick Douglass is because he was an ardent proponent of full equality for the residents of the District of Columbia,” Norton told CQ Roll Call. “We weren’t just looking for another famous black man; we found the right black man, a man who built his home in the District of Columbia who was an icon of his time and remains an icon of American history today.”

The 50 states are each allowed two figures in Statuary Hall, and Norton for years proposed legislation to give D.C. that same privilege. Spurred by her bill, the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities began the process of soliciting suggestions for which luminaries to honor. While Douglass won a place in the Capitol, a statue of Pierre L’Enfant — the architect who designed the city — remains downtown in the John A. Wilson Building.

11617: GOP Declares End Of Racism.

The Huffington Post reported the following:

On Sunday, the Republican National Committee tweeted out an ill-advised tribute to civil rights icon Rosa Parks, praising the late activist for “her role in ending racism.”

See more here.

11026: Rosa Parks Is A Rock.

From The New York Daily News…

Rosa Parks statue unveiled in U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall

Hailed by many as the mother of the civil rights movement, Obama celebrated Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus as pivotal moment that ‘helped change America and change the world.’

By Dan Hirschhorn / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Washington honored the late civil rights activist Rosa Parks on Wednesday as a woman of “unshakable resolve” who “defied injustice.”

Unveiling a statue of Parks in the Capitol building’s Statuary Hall, President Obama and congressional leaders in both parties hailed Parks as a great American who changed the country for the better.

“She defied the odds and she defied injustice,” Obama said to a crowd that included descendants of Parks. “She lived a life of activism but also a life of dignity and grace. And in a single moment with the simplest of gestures, she helped change America and change the world.”

Parks was a seamstress and civil rights activist when she famously refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala. bus to a white rider in 1955. That launched the Montgomery bus boycott and was a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement. Parks died in 2005. The statue is the result of legislation signed by former President George W. Bush. She’s the first African-American to take a place in Statuary Hall.

“Rosa Parks held no elected office, possessed no fortune, lived far from the halls of power,” Obama said. “And yet today she takes her rightful place among those who have shaped America.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said that with “this statue we affirm that the courage and the cause of Rosa Parks not only earned her a place in the hearts of all Americans but a permanent place in this hall.”

Though Parks held no elected office, McConnell said, “with quiet courage and unshakeable resolve, she did something no less important on a cold Alabama evening in 1955. She helped unite the spirit of America. … We have had the humility as a nation to admit past mistakes. But it has always required people like Rosa Parks to help us get there.”

10963: Rosa Parks Goes Postal.

From The San Francisco Chronicle…

Postal Service honors Rosa Parks with new stamp

Associated Press, By Mike Householder

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — Hundreds of people, including some of Michigan’s political elite, gathered Monday to celebrate the late Rosa Parks on what would have been her 100th birthday by unveiling a postage stamp in her honor steps from the Alabama bus on which she stared down segregation nearly 60 years ago.

Parks, who died in 2005, became one of the enduring figures of the Civil Rights movement when she refused to cede her seat in the colored section of the Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white man after the whites-only section filled up. Her defiance and the ensuing black boycott of the city bus system helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rise to national prominence.

“This is being done in sight of the bus where future generations can sit in a seat where Rosa Parks sat and refused to budge and in a seat where the world was changed,” U.S. Sen. Carl Levin said before he and U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a fellow Democrat, pulled the curtain to reveal the Rosa Parks Forever Stamp, which bears her 1950’s likeness.

The stamp ceremony was part of a 12-hour event at The Henry Ford in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Parks’ birth that also featured speeches and live music.

At one point, officials cleared the vehicle and allowed Deputy Postmaster General Ronald Stroman — who as a young lawyer worked on Conyers’ staff while Parks worked at Conyers’ Detroit office — to sit on the bus by himself.

Stroman looked around the bus and gathered his thoughts before saying: “It’s such a powerful experience to be actually in the seat that Rosa Parks sat in. It’s almost emotional — very overwhelming to be here.”

The Parks stamp is the second in a set of civil rights stamps being issued this year by the U.S. Postal Service.

USPS launched the series Jan. 1 with the Emancipation Proclamation Forever Stamp, which was issued at The National Archives in Washington. In August, the series will culminate with the dedication of a stamp recognizing the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington.

The value of a Forever Stamp is the domestic First-Class Mail letter price in effect on the day of use. They always are sold at the same price as a regular First-Class Mail stamp.

Forever Stamps currently are being sold for 46 cents.

The Parks stamp went on sale Monday at post offices nationwide and at The Henry Ford, where dozens of people lined up to buy it, and nearby where collectors gathered to get their new stamps and other collectables stamped — or officially “canceled” — by a postal service employee.

Avid collector David Malhalab was one of the first in line to get stamps, pamphlets and other items canceled.

“Today is the Super Bowl or the championship game for stamp collectors,” he said, seated at a table surrounded by his various stamped collectibles.

President Barack Obama issued a proclamation that was read at Monday’s event by Detroit-area Democratic U.S. Rep. Gary Peters.

“As we mark the 100th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ birth, we celebrate the life of a genuine American hero and remind ourselves that although the principle of equality has always been self-evident, it has never been self-executing,” the proclamation reads.

“I call upon all Americans to observe this day with appropriate service, community and education programs to honor Rosa Parks’ enduring legacy.”

10211: Matthew Weiner On U.S. History.

Vulture published a short interview with AMC series Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, probing his thoughts on the integration of secretary Dawn Chambers and the Civil Rights Era. Weiner displayed his cluelessness on a couple of levels. “I feel like the expectation that introducing a black character means you have to tell the civil rights struggle is in a way racist,” Weiner said. Um, are viewers really expecting Mad Men to spotlight the civil rights movement? If the program remains true to its cultural accuracy, the staff at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce will not even notice the revolution. Audience members would probably be fine if Weiner simply developed a minority character versus having them serve as token props. Hell, Weiner’s talent-challenged son gets more screen time than Draper’s administrative assistant. “All I can say is, it’s early. We have 26 episodes left. I don’t feel like in the history of the United States that 1966 was the year of civil rights; it’s early,” Weiner added. Um, Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of the bus—as well as the Montgomery Bus Boycott—took place in 1955. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, “I Have a Dream” in 1963, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. And MLK was shot in 1968. Sure, 1966 might not be “the year of civil rights,” but it’s certainly within the general timeframe.

Why Mad Men Hasn’t Dealt Much With Civil Rights

By Kyle Buchanan

If you were expecting Mad Men to devote more time to the civil rights movement after the salvo of season-opening episodes that introduced black secretary Dawn (played by Teyonnah Paris), creator Matt Weiner would like you to keep those assumptions in check. “I feel like the expectation that introducing a black character means you have to tell the civil rights struggle is in a way racist,” Weiner tells the Los Angeles Times. “I use her character the same way I use all the characters on the show. She is there. I’m sorry if people were disappointed. Do I regret there wasn’t more of it? Yeah. All I can say is, it’s early. We have 26 episodes left. I don’t feel like in the history of the United States that 1966 was the year of civil rights; it’s early.”

As for all that talk about the anachronistically high divorce rate on Mad Men? Well, there’s at least one married couple Weiner says he doesn’t plan on breaking up: Don and his recent bride, Megan. “People should assume like Don does that he will be married to this woman for the rest of his life,” says Weiner. “This is not one in a series of marriages for Don. This is the good marriage after the bad one. Of course, he’s part of his time, though. Can he really deal with an independent person?”

9100: Rosa Parks Revelation.

From The New York Post…

Rosa Parks’ essay reveals neighbor’s rape attempt

The Associated Press

Long before Rosa Parks was hailed as the “mother of the civil rights movement,” she wrote a detailed and harrowing account of nearly being raped by a white neighbor who employed her as a housekeeper in 1931.

The six-page essay, written in her own hand many years after the incident, is among thousands of her personal items currently residing in the Manhattan warehouse and cramped offices of Guernsey’s Auctioneers, which has been selected by a Michigan court to find an institution to buy and preserve the complete archive.

The Associated Press was provided with some samples of the documents in the archive, including portions of the essay. Archivists had reviewed the documents for Guernsey’s and provided descriptions of their contents.

Civil rights historian Danielle McGuire said she had never before heard of the attempted rape of Parks and called the find among Parks’ papers astounding.

It helps explain what triggered Parks’ lifelong campaign against the ritualistic rape of black women by white men, said McGuire, whose recent book “At the Dark End of the Street” examines how economic intimidation and sexual violence were used to derail the freedom movement and how it went unpunished during the Jim Crow era.

“I thought it was because of the stories that she had heard. But this gives a much more personal context to that,” said McGuire, an assistant professor of history at Wayne State University in Detroit. Her book recounts Parks’ role in investigating for the NAACP the case of Recy Taylor, a young sharecropper raped by a group of white men in 1944.

Of her own experience, Parks wrote, “He offered me a drink of whiskey, which I promptly and vehemently refused. He moved nearer to me and put his hand on my waist. I was very frightened by now.”

“He liked me. … he didn’t want me to be lonely and would I be sweet to him. He had money to give me for accepting his attentions,” she wrote.

“I was ready to die but give my consent never. Never, never.”

Most people know the story of Parks, a black, middle-aged seamstress who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955. Guernsey’s President Arlan Ettinger said her personal papers reveal a much more complex individual, one who spent a lifetime fighting for racial equality and against the sexual violence of black women.

Parks is credited with inspiring the civil rights movement with her solitary act of defiance on Dec. 1, 1955, that led to the Supreme Court outlawing segregation on buses. She received the nation’s two highest honors in her lifetime, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor.

She died in 2005 at age 92, leaving the trove of personal correspondence, papers relating to her work for the Montgomery branch of the NAACP, tributes from presidents and world leaders, school books, family bibles, clothing, furniture and more — about 8,000 items in all.

“It is wonderful and breathtaking,” Ettinger said. “It will be up to the institution that ends up with it to make this material known to the world.”

Proceeds from the sale will go to resolve a dispute over her estate, divided between her relatives and the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development that she created in 1987.

Guernsey’s, known for its sale of iconic and celebrity collections, took an inventory of Parks’ homes in Detroit soon after she died and is looking for an institution to buy her archive, which Ettinger described as the most complete he’s ever seen.

The only thing missing, he quipped, is the bus itself. The bus is in The Henry Ford, a museum in Dearborn, Mich.

The archive reveals an infinitely complex individual, Ettinger said.

Parks worked on many cases with the NAACP, including the Scottsboro defense of nine black teenage boys accused of rape in Alabama in 1931. She was involved in the black power conventions in the 1970s and the anti-apartheid movement in the 1990s.

Parks wrote on anything she could get her hands on. The backs of church pamphlets and NAACP flyers are filled with her thoughts and observations.

There are detailed notes on how African-American citizens should comport themselves during the bus boycott following her arrest that lasted 382 days and about the organization that led it, the Montgomery Improvement Association, headed by a young pastor named the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Elsewhere, she laments about life under the oppressive Jim Crow laws and asks what is wrong with the world when her jailer refuses her a drink of water.

She also vividly recalls an incident when she was 10 years old involving a white boy who threatened to hit her. Demonstrating some of the determination she exhibited on the bus decades later, Parks writes “I picked up a small piece of brick and drew back to strike him if he should hit me. I was angry. He went his way without further comment.”

Parks’ memoirs include one with author Jim Haskins and another with one of her attorneys in the early 1990s, but by then said McGuire, “her story was pretty much well-rehearsed, and limited to her time in Montgomery and the bus incident.”

“Her story had become mythic and iconic … I can’t imagine what that felt like for her to have a whole history of activism and political work erased and turned almost into a cartoon character,” said McGuire.

Guernsey’s has talked to about 20 museums, libraries, university and churches about buying the archive over the past three years.

“There hasn’t been a group that didn’t desperately want it but had to face the reality whether they could afford it,” Ettinger said, adding that he was currently in discussions with three separate entities — an institution and two individuals who could buy the archive with the intention of donating it to a museum or other cultural institution.

He declined to give an exact figure but said $8 million to $10 million was in the “ballpark.”

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research library of the New York Public Library, was among the interested institutions.

Its new director, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, said the center has very little material on Parks and would love to own some of her papers but because the archive is being sold as a single collection, it took the Schomburg out of the running.

“She is a witness to the beginning and the maturation of the civil rights movement. . She walked as close to Martin Luther King Jr., as you can get at the beginning of the movement,” Muhammad said.

McGuire wondered why Parks omitted the attempted rape incident from her memoirs but included the story about the little boy who threatened her.

“It shows some kind of conscious effort in shaping her own legacy but also, I think, speaks to the issue of respectability. She doesn’t necessarily feel comfortable telling the world about what happened,” she said. “But she’s contemplating telling people about it because she’s written it down.”

8212: Google Gets On The Bus For Rosa Parks.

From AOL News…

Rosa Parks Honored by Google With Montgomery Bus Doodle

By Steven Hoffer

The folks at Google are commemorating the 55th anniversary of one of the civil rights movement’s great heroes.

On this day in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, which sparked the 381-day Montgomery, Ala., bus boycotts and turned the 42-year-old seamstress into a critical symbol of the fight against segregation laws in the South.

Parks died on Oct. 4, 2005, but her legacy remains a driving force in the push for racial equality. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

The doodle, pictured above, features a ‘50s-style commuter bus and a group of children in place of the “ogl” in Google. Look closely by the door and you’ll notice the serial number 2857, the same serial number engraved on the actual bus where the historic incident took place.

Some Google users, however, are questioning the choice of honoring Parks rather than using the Google doodle to recognize World AIDS Day, as Yahoo! has done with its logo.

Other recent Google doodles include Ina Garten’s Thanksgiving doodle, the artist Frida Kahlo doodle and a Dizzy Gillespie birthday doodle.

8130: I Have A Dream Car.

Mercedes-Benz used Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to hype vehicles. And Volkswagen did likewise. WTF, it’s not even Black History Month yet. Plus, the brands and advertising agencies responsible for the work are hardly supporters of the Civil Rights leader’s iconic dream, at least based on their diversity records. What’s next? Malcolm X for BMW X Series? Rosa Parks for Honda SUVs?

5156: Johnnie Carr (1912-2008).

From The Associated Press…

Civil Rights Icon Johnnie Carr, 97, Dies

By DESIREE HUNTER

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Johnnie Carr, who joined childhood friend Rosa Parks in the historic Montgomery bus boycott and kept a busy schedule of civil rights activism up to her final days, has died. She was 97.

Carr died Friday night, said Baptist Health hospital spokeswoman Melody Ragland. She had been hospitalized after a stroke Feb. 11.

Carr succeeded the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association in 1967, a post she held at her death. It was the newly formed association that led the boycott of city buses in the Alabama capital in 1955 after Parks, a black seamstress, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to whites on a crowded bus.

A year later the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racial segregation on public transportation.

“Johnnie Carr is one of the three major icons of the Civil Rights Movement: Dr. King, Rosa Parks and Johnnie Carr,” said Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “I think ultimately, when the final history books are written, she’ll be one of the few people remembered for that terrific movement.”

As the Improvement Association’s president, Carr helped lead several initiatives to improve race relations and conditions for blacks. She was involved in a lawsuit to desegregate Montgomery schools, with her then-13-year-old son, Arlam, the named plaintiff.

“She hadn’t been sick up until she had the stroke,” Arlam Carr said Saturday. “It was such a massive stroke that she never was able to recover from it. She was still very active — going around and speaking — but it was just one of those things.”

She played a prominent role in 2005 on the 50th anniversary of Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat, speaking to thousands of schoolchildren who marched to the Capitol.

“Look back, but march forward,” Carr urged the huge crowd of young people.

She also traveled to memorial services in Washington, where her eulogy of Parks was “really the most dynamic” moment, recalled Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

“There were many people who spoke who were much better known … but she carried the day,” said Bond, who helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Just days before her stroke, Carr participated in King Day ceremonies in Montgomery, speaking after a parade. Admirers marveled at her energy and commitment into her 90s.

“She was always an encourager and not a divider,” Mayor Bobby Bright told the Montgomery Advertiser. “She was just a loving person. She was truly the mother figure that we all so desperately needed in Montgomery during a very trying period of our history.”

In a statement, Gov. Bob Riley said Carr was a “remarkable woman and will be deeply missed.”

She was a true inspiration, Riley said, and “leaves behind a lasting legacy of pride, determination, and perseverance.”

The family said funeral arrangements would be announced later.

Arlam Carr said that his mother’s 97th birthday was last month, but that the only place her age showed was on paper.

“She was still driving her own car. How many 97-year-olds are still driving and you feel comfortable with their driving?” he said. “She has lived a very active life. If there’s one thing about it, we all know we’re going to leave here one day and this was just the time the Lord wanted her to ‘come on.’”

Dees said he, too, was impressed with Carr’s vigor and amazed that “she never showed the strain of age. Her voice was strong and her spirit was always cheerful.”

“One of the things I respect her for is she did not have the rancor and anger that so many local African-Americans of the civil rights movement had,” he said. “She was very willing to build bridges. Montgomery’s always been very divisive, and she showed an example of reaching across racial lines.”

In recent decades, civil rights landmarks, including the site where Parks was arrested, have become historic points of interest for tourists.

“When we first started, we weren’t thinking about history,” Carr told The Associated Press in an interview in 2003. “We were thinking about the conditions and the discrimination.”

Bond called Carr a “spark plug” and “one of the remaining links we had to the Montgomery bus boycott.”

“She was remarkable to have had such a long career and to have held concern for justice in the forefront for all this time,” he said. “It’s a great tragedy that she’s gone, and those of us who knew her are blessed to have that experience.”