
          Southern Women
                  By Powell, JanisJanis Powell
          Vol. 2, No. 3, 1979, pp. 28
          
          With an official proclamation and the announcement of an annual
scholarship in her name, October 16 was declared as a day to honor
Rosa Parks during a rally in Atlanta's Central City Park, co-sponsored
by the Emergency Land Fund and the Southern Regional Council. It was a
part of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden's speaking tour promoting the views
of their anti-corporate and anti-nuclear Campaign for Economic
Democracy (CED). The noonday event, which drew several thousand
people, was held "to have the important issues of social change
presented directly to the people of Atlanta and to cherish the
presence of the South's number one citizen, Rosa Parks," according to
Steve Suitts, SRC executive director.
          In addressing the crowd, well-known activist and actress, Jane
Fonda, said women are now the vanguard of social change, pully back
"the curtain of apathy" to work for "economic rights as well as civil
rights." Fonda spoke of Rosa Parks' ongoing contribution to the civil
rights movement as being anexample of the innumerable women who have
been a leading force in the struggle for equality and justice in this
country.
          On December 1, 1955, when a bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama,
asked four Blacks to give up their seats to White passengers, one of
the Blacks, Rosa Parks, refused. This corageous decision to stop
obeying unjust laws prompted the formation of a year-long bus boycott
by the Montgomery Improvement Association with Martin Luther King,
Jr. as its president.
          Despite the many acts of violence directed at the Black community
for the boycott, Parks stuck by her decision to challenge the racism
of the law and on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court unanimously
ruled that Montgomery's bus segregation laws were
unconstitutional. The boycott marked the beginning of a new era of
aggressive nonviolent action on the part of Southern Blacks.
          Fonda also announced the establishment of a $5,000 annual college
scholarship in Rosa Parks' name for the young Black Atlantan who
demonstrated the most commitment for social activism during the
previous year. The scholarship is being set up in conjunction with the
National Committee for a Rosa Parks Shrine in Detroit,
Michigan. Announcements for the application process will be sent to
schools and civil rights groups in the near future.
          The visit by Fonda and Hayden was designed to draw public attention
to what they called the rapidly growing domination of American life by
large corporations and the centralized nuclear power supply
system. The Campaign for Economic Development is a brainchild of
Hayden, 40, a founder of Students for a Democratic Society, a veteran
of the anti-war movement and unsuccessful candidate in the 1976 United
States Senate Race in California.
          In urgihn that economic rights be the next goal of activists, the
couple said they found more and more female secretaries and clerical
workers starting to "knock on doors" to organize for issues of
economic domocracy. In coming to the South, they said they wanted to
honor the woman who started much of today's activism.
        