The gang rape was horrific. The NAACP sent Rosa Parks to investigate. (WaPo)

[eppur_se_muova]

By DeNeen L. Brown November 27

She was walking home from a church revival in her small Alabama town on the evening of Sept. 3, 1944, when a green Chevrolet filled with white men pulled up.

Recy Taylor tried to run, but one of the men grabbed the 24-year-old black mother and forced her into the sedan. She was driven into a grove of pine trees, where, one by one, six men brutally raped her, threatening to cut her throat if she cried out, according to state records.

A few days later, news of the horrendous gang rape reached the office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People office in Montgomery. The NAACP sent its best investigator to Abbeville, Ala., to find out why there had been no arrests.

That investigator’s name was Rosa Parks.

More than a decade before Parks became a civil rights hero for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, Parks led a national campaign against sexual assaults on black women.
***
more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/27/the-gang-rape-was-horrific-the-naacp-sent-rosa-parks-to-investigate-it/

[marble falls]

1. In Barbershop the charactor Eddie said that Rosa Parks wasn't a civil rights hero, ...

that she was "just" a black women tired and wanting to sit down.

Man oh man, did he get that one wrong.

Rosa Parks for the twenty dollar bill.


Absolutely, hands down, the best OP of the day on a day with a bunch of great OPs.

[volstork]

2. Rosa Parks changed the world.

n/t

[mythology]

3. So Rosa Parks was even more of a bad ass than previously known

[niyad]

4. thank you for this information--still more to know and admire about this incredible woman.

[orleans]

5. and for those of us who can't afford to read

the washington post:

https://thelily.com/the-gang-rape-was-horrific-the-naacp-sent-rosa-parks-to-investigate-1b7fbb45ca93

[Hamlette]

6. the sit in on the bus was a set up

Rosa worked for the NAACP and they had been looking for someone to challenge the segregation of busses. Black women would occasionally get arrested for sitting in the front of the bus but they rejected each of them because they would not have been good spokespersons so Rosa decided (agreed?) to be arrested and be the poster person for the boycott.

Read Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch which is a moving history of MLK Jr. The part about the bus boycott made me cry. Tears of joy that it worked and sadness that we needed it.

[murielm99]

7. More like a test case than

a set up. Set up makes it sound like a scam. It was perfectly legitimate to look for the right person to correct this situation.