Rosa Parks

Although the poem is named for civil rights hero Rosa Parks, Parks herself is not mentioned until Line 38 of this 57-line poem. This choice signifies that Parks is not the focus of the poem—instead the poem is about the movement that Parks was inspired and fueled by, and the ways she inspired and fueled that movement.

The implicit metaphor behind Giovanni’s single-stanza poem is that the civil rights movement was like a train: It had many interlocking and interdependent parts; required many people to start, propel, and steer it; transported many people along with it; and had the ability to travel long distances.

Bringing the metaphor to life is the poem’s repeating refrain: “This is for the Pullman Porters who.” This phrase (or something very close to it) appears eight times in the first two-thirds of the poem (Lines 1, 4, 9-10, 12, 16, 23-24, 26, and 33). Partway through the poem, the refrain shifts away from the porters, highlighting others involved in the civil rights movement: “And this is for all the mothers who cried” (Line 37), “And this is / for all the people who said Never Again” (Lines 37-38), “And this is about Rosa Parks whose” (Lines 38-39), “This is about Mrs. Rosa Parks” (Line 41), and “This is about the / moment Rosa Parks shouldered her cross” (Lines 42-43). This refrain organizes and propels “Rosa Parks,” echoing the circular motion of a train wheel. Every time the refrain comes back around, the poem picks up steam. This refrain will also organize and propel this analysis of the poem.

The poem begins in 1925, with the formation of the first all-Black labor union by a specialized group of railway porters: “This is for the Pullman Porters who organized when people said / they couldn’t” (Lines 1-2). At this point, the train of the civil rights movement is still only pulling away from the platform, moving slowly.

The second iteration of the refrain takes us 25 years into the future:

. . . This if 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 (Lines 4-6)

Argued before the Supreme Court by civil rights attorney and son of a Pullman porter Thurgood Marshall, Brown v. Board of Education is the landmark 1954 civil rights case that outlawed school segregation in the United States. “Rosa Parks” presents Brown v. Board of Education as a hard-fought victory for the civil rights movement, but one that didn’t end racially motivated discrimination and violence. Nevertheless, the decision inspired a Gwendolyn Brooks poem about a lynching that took place shortly after the Brown decision (Lines 8-9).

The next instance of the refrain shifts the wording ever so slightly, letting readers know that, in addition to aiding Marshall, the porters also spread the word about the fight for civil rights:

. . . it was the

Pullman Porters who whispered to the traveling men both

The Blues Men and the “Race” Men so that they would

know what was going on (Lines 9-12).

These lines further emphasize that, like the running of a train, the civil rights movement involved many people. Like the movement it describes, the train of the poem picks up steam. The next iterations of the refrain in Lines 12 and 16 reference a “fourteen-year-old boy”—Emmett Till, a young Black teenager from Chicago who, while visiting family in Mississippi, was kidnapped, brutally tortured, and murdered by two white men. The poem, however, first depicts Till before any of this happens—the young teen is alive and well, riding a train where he is “welcomed” by the Pullman porters (Line 17). As one refrain points out, the porters watch over and protect Till while he was on their train: “This is for the men who kept / him safe” (Lines 26-27). Giovanni contrasts the welcome, caring, and safety Till experienced on the train with the vicious end he met shortly after arriving at his destination:

[H]e had to get off the train. And ended up in Money,

Mississippi. And was horribly, brutally, inexcusably, and unac-

ceptably murdered (Lines 31-33).

Giovanni’s earlier mention of Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock” foreshadows this moment of “Rosa Parks.” Brooks’s poem took for its subject a lynching that took place in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Till’s murder in the summer of 1955, shortly after the Supreme Court followed up on its initial decision in Brown v. Board of Education and ordered that schools be integrated with “all due haste,” was unspeakable racially-motivated violence.

It’s worth noting here that the refrain, though repeated, is repeated at irregular intervals. The first two iterations of the refrain were only four lines apart (Lines 1, 4). The two iterations of the refrain prior to Giovanni’s mention of the murder of Till were only two lines apart (Lines 23-24, 26-27). The next iteration, however, happens six lines later. This irregular repetition of the refrain underscores the fact that progress happened unevenly— the civil rights movement was characterized by immense victories and huge setbacks, something the content of the poem also gestures at by juxtaposing a tremendous Supreme Court victory with the horrible murders that followed.

The next, newest iteration of the refrain describes the Pullman porters returning Till’s body to his mother in Chicago, thus enabling her to have the open casket funeral that sparked so much outrage—outrage embodied by a shifting, ever more repeating refrain that now praises not only the Pullman porters, but “mothers,” “people,” and “Rosa Parks” (Lines 37, 38, 38-39). The refrain is now set on a loop, recurring in three lines a row: “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” (Lines 37-38). This tripling underscores the immensity and intensity of the outcry over Till’s murder. It also represents a shift from one form of transportation to another. Till’s body was returned to his mother via train, but Parks made her stand on a bus:

. . . 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 (Lines 37-39).

From here on out, instead of a rotation of a train wheel, the refrain will be the rotation of a bus wheel. And instead of the Pullman porters, the refrain will focus on Parks. As Giovanni presents it, grief over Till’s murder drove Parks to take a stand:

. . . 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 (Lines 42-46).

Like the train metaphor, these lines further emphasize that the civil rights movement required many people to propel it. Also like a train, the civil rights movement had conductors; Parks was one of them: “When Mrs. Parks / said “NO” a passionate movement was begun” (46-47). Not only did Parks bravely oppose Jim Crow laws that unjustly segregated American society, but she also inspired more people to do the same:

. . . 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” (Lines 51-54).

The poem’s ending emphasizes the interconnectedness of the events of the civil rights movement:

. . . 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 (Lines 54).

These final lines show the causal links between the Pullman Porters, Emmett Till, and Rosa Parks, personalizing the abstract historical progress of civil rights as a chain of people passing ideals and dreams onto each other. The poem also sues movement to signal a kind of conclusion: Unlike the many other people standing up for their right or to protest, and unlike the train moving inexorably forward, Rosa Parks registers her rebellion by sitting.