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Last Updated: Oct 21st, 2007 - 09:55:08 |
Dear SeeingBlack.com,
Mark Anthony Neal's article on the Durham rape case is on target for the most part, but I would like to offer the following. I was in the audience when Mrs. Rosa
Parks came to Howard University to campaign for Jesse Jackson's first run for president. It was the same Sunday that Marvin Gaye was killed. Mrs. Parks talked about Claudette Colvin and stated at least twice that it was
the girl's mother who refused to let her case go forth as a test case because she did not want the shame and glare of a public exposure of her daughter's pregnancy.
According to Mrs. Parks, Black leaders begged the
mother to let her daughter's case go forth but she refused. Given the mores of those times and how people felt about teen and unwed pregnancy, one can understand the mother's decision. Further, Mrs. Parks stated that she was motivated by Colvin's situation to take her stand.
As the mother of a daughter, I would have made the same choice as Colvin's mother. Her daughter had enough ahead of her as an unwed mother without national media spotlighting her precarious status, as well as bringing
probable threats against her life and the livelihood of her parents as happened to the Parks. In those days, unwed pregnancy was not yawned at as it is now. It is highly unlikely that Claudette would have wanted to be in
the limelight with a bulging stomach and no wedding band. The racist press would have made mince meat of her.
I offer this information not to dispute Neal's essay, especially his remarks on how prominent Black men are immunized against certain criminal acts nor to question the integrity of Aldon Morris' scholarship whom he cites as his source. That may be the story Norris was told, but to be fair to the Black people of Montgomery who labored under a great deal of stress and constant
danger we must point out the possibility of another explanation of what happened in the Colvin case. And certainly Mrs. Rosa Parks is a highly credible source.
Neal incorporates Morris' version of events into the deeply flawed but now popular perspective that Black faith and religion are only second to White racism in perpetuating oppression within the Black community
especially on issues of sexual orientation. Attacking church going Black people seems to be a favorite pastime of some Black scholars and critics.
To declare that the Montgomery Black leadership rejected Colvin on the ice cold grounds of "wrong Black body" is at best shallow thinking and at worst a shamefully inappropriate ideological attack on some of the most decent, morally consistent and courageous people this nation has produced. But even if the leadership did reject Colvin because of her pregnancy, is it not possible that they acted out of moral integrity with compassion for a young woman already facing a marginalized future of great difficulty? Is it just possible that as parents themselves that they saw the health of the young mother and child as a higher and first priority? Let's not jump to applythe strange fruit thesis indiscriminately.
Thank you,
Paula Matabane
Atlanta, GA.
© Copyright 2006 SeeingBlack.com
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