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Social Psychology Quarterly

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Volume 72 • Number 2 • June 2009

A Journal of the American Sociological Association

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Social Psychology QuarterlyVolume 72, Number 2 June 2009

CONTENTS

A JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

OPENINGS

ANDY CLARNO 95Or Does It Explode? Collecting Shells in Gaza

ALAN SICA 99Social Psychology’s Neglected Past: Review Essay of Gustav Jahoda, A History of Social Psychology from the Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment to the Second World War

TWO ON COLLECTIVE MEMORY

THOMAS DEGLOMA 105Expanding Trauma through Space and Time: Mapping the Rhetorical Strategies of Trauma Carrier Groups

BARRY SCHWARTZ 123Collective Forgetting and the Symbolic Power of Oneness: The StrangeApotheosis of Rosa Parks

ARTICLES

DEREK A. KREAGER AND JEREMY STAFF 143The Sexual Double Standard and Adolescent Peer Acceptance

JASON RODRIQUEZ 165Attributions of Agency and the Construction of Moral Order: Dementia, Death, and Dignity in Nursing-home Care

TOBIAS SCHRÖDER AND WOLFGANG SCHOLL 180Affective Dynamics of Leadership: An Experimental Test of Affect Control Theory


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Collective forgetting refers to what isunregistered in the imagination of indi-viduals, unchronicled in research mono-

graphs and textbooks, and/or uncommemorat-ed by monuments, relics, statues, and ritualobservances. A metaphor for failure to trans-mit information about the past, collective for-getting refers not only to people’s forgettingevents they once knew but also to havingnever known them in the first place. Joiningthe adjective “collective” to forgetting doesnot imply an emergent “social mind” or thatevery member of a society forgets the samething; it means that remembering and forget-ting, knowledge and ignorance, are distributedunevenly among different communities,groups, and individuals. Events and people ofcomparable significance are also remembereddifferently within these same communities,groups, and individuals. Therefore, two newquestions arise, the first of which concernsAmerica’s most prominent civil rights heroine:Rosa Parks. Why is her renown as great as itis? In this essay I make many statements aboutwhat different people think of Rosa Parks,how they feel about her, and judge her. LikeClifford Geertz (1983), I do so not by trying to

get into people’s minds, as I might through amassive interview project, but by searchingout and analyzing the symbolic forms—words, images, objects—by which people rep-resent her to themselves. The second questionis why have so many men and women whoseconduct was more consequential than Mrs.Parks’s been uncommemorated and therebyforgotten? What does society gain from theiroblivion?

The significance of this question inheresin its premises. William Goode (1978)observed many years ago that “winners in var-ious kinds of competition, even when they aremarked off from the losers by minute differ-ences in performance, or, (as in science) bynarrow differences in the time of discovery orachievement, seem to be given far greateramounts of prestige than those differenceswould appear to justify”(66). Exchange theoryconvinces Goode that the “market” for excep-tional people is limited. Given a wide array ofstellar performers whose differences are bare-ly noticeable, people have no incentive tolearn about and admire all of them. In Goode’swords: “The gap between the most highlyranked and the somewhat less esteemed ispartly created by the commonsensical unwill-ingness of most people to buy any worse com-modity, to admire any less competent person,than the one they rate the highest, if the choiceis without cost” (73–4, emphasis in original).Because it usually costs less (in terms of atten-tion) to admire a field’s best (a single task)

Social Psychology Quarterly2009, Vol. 72, No. 2, 123–142

Collective Forgetting And The Symbolic Power Of Oneness:The Strange Apotheosis Of Rosa Parks

BARRY SCHWARTZUniversity of Georgia

Oneness refers to the convention of recognizing a single individual’s performance andignoring others, including those who may have performed as well. Although oneness is anadaptation to cognitive deficits, it cannot be explained by them. If long-term and workingmemory were more capacious, society’s need for ideals to establish realm-specific standardsand meanings would tend to limit recognition and renown to one individual. The apotheo-sis of Rosa Parks is a case in point. Her celebrity and the obscurity of others who risked andaccomplished more than she are two aspects of the same social process. Revealing onenessto be a social imperative, this case study leads to a broader understanding of collective for-getting.

123

I would like to thank James M. Balkwell, BerniceBarnett, James Dowd, Michael Feige, Mark Jacobs, andAbraham Tesser for useful suggestions on earlier drafts.Direct correspondence to Department of Sociology,University of Georgia, 113 Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA30602; [email protected].

124 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY QUARTERLY

than to admire its first and second best (a mul-tiple task), Goode’s explanation of why themagnitude of reward is often out of proportionto achievement is persuasive; however, hisargument skirts the related questions of (1)whether people are unwilling or unable toadmire slightly less adept performers, and (2)why these performers not only fail to receivedue credit but are often forgotten altogether.

COGNITION AND MEMORY: CAPACITY LIMITS

Acclaim results from attention, and theunderstanding of attention requires a theory ofmind. George Herbert Mead (1934:25,emphasis added) explained:

Our whole intelligent process seems to lie in theattention, which is selective, of certain types ofstimuli. Other stimuli which are bombarding thesystem are in some fashion shunted off. We giveour attention to one particular thing. Not only dowe open the door to certain stimuli and close itto others, but our attention is an organizingprocess as well as a selective process.|.|.|.Herewe have the organism as acting and determiningits environment.”

Mead brings to the problem of attention aconception of mind that transcends Goode’scalculus of cost, reward, and profit. But whatis to be said of attention itself? Because atten-tion, in Mead’s time, could not be located inany one part of the brain, he had to take onfaith the “parallelist” assumption that “Whattakes place in consciousness runs parallel towhat takes place in the central nervous sys-tem” (Mead 1934:19). Today, however, we canbetter explain how attention limits the range ofobjects which individuals can attend andremember.

Two premises frame our present under-standing. First, the central nervous system’scapacity to organize, store, and retrieve infor-mation is severely limited. Although humanlong-term memory is almost infinite (duringan average lifetime it will have accumulatedmore than five times the information con-tained in all the printed material in the world[Marois 2005]), much of this material fadesfrom disuse, is “overwritten” by more recent-ly acquired knowledge, or coded in a way to

make it irretrievable by working memory(Vockell 2006).

However, working (short-term) memoryis beset by limits of its own. It can attend to nomore than several objects at once and can per-form efficiently one task at a time. GeorgeMiller (1956) was the first psychologist toinvestigate these limits. As a sender transmitsmore information, the receiver’s knowledgeincreases at first but soon levels off. Thisplateau, according to Miller, represents thereceiver’s channel capacity—the largestamount of information (sounds, tastes, dots,discrete letters, and numbers) he or she candifferentiate. For cognitive discriminationproblems, human channel capacity averagesseven units of information; however, Millernever generalized this number to all tasks.Moreover, his “magic number 7” might wellbe composed of two smaller “chunks” of threeand four units (Cowan 2005:23–5).

Direct demonstration provides the mostaccurate measure of cognitive limits. The pari-etal cortex, according to recent magnetic reso-nance image (MRI) studies, becomes moreactive as more objects (visual images, con-cepts, plans, people, and other chunks ofinformation) are added to working memory,but once its limit of four objects (on average)is reached, the adding of more objects to thetask causes no further increase in cortex activ-ity (Marois 2005; see also Ricoeur 2004).1

Working memory’s limit also causes the mostrecently received information to be bestremembered (Cowan 1995:9) and the forget-ting of irrelevant memories to enhance theremembering of relevant target memories(Kuhl, et al.).

This essay’s second premise is that indi-viduals adapt to the limits of their long- and

1 Structural as opposed to cognitive limits are describedby Randall Collins (1998). Collins observes that the num-ber of philosophical schools involved in conflict at anygiven time generally varies between three and six. Thelower limit is set by the existence of conflicting groupswhose claims are resolved by a third group taking a medi-ating position; the upper limit is set by audiences’ “atten-tion space.” For more than six schools to compete againstone another is to overload the outsider’s capacity to followthe arguments.

THE SYMBOLIC POWER OF ONENESS 125

short-term memory by “heuristic” strategies,enabling them to ignore most of the informa-tion to which they are exposed. History buffs,therefore, can name all American presidents,but few vice-presidents. The typical baseballfan can identify last year’s division winners inboth American and National leagues, but heprobably knows few if any of the respectivesecond-place winners. Olympic (first place)gold medal recipients are far more likely to beremembered than (second and third place)recipients of silver and bronze medals. Thetypical Miss America enthusiast will remem-ber last year’s winner but not the runner-up.Political and academic scenes are similar:despite extensive training in understanding thestructural context of events, American socialscientists seem inclined vastly to exaggeratethe role of one person, the president, in caus-ing national successes and failures. In science,literature, and artistic award ceremonies, allnominees are known but winners alone areremembered. However, this tendency toward“oneness” cannot result exclusively from cog-nitive limits.

Preview

Forgetting results not only from efforts tosuppress painful, dissonant, or ignoble experi-ence, as constructionists (Bodnar 1992;Zerubavel 2003; Connerton 2008) assert, butalso from the consignment to oblivion of wor-thy and noble actions. To forget reflects notonly virtuous actors’ failure to find sponsorsto institutionalize their memory, as agency-oriented investigators (Fine and McDonnell2007) would claim, but also from the necessi-ty of excluding virtuous actions from memory.To find advantage in the forgetting of virtueseems absurd, but our capacity to rememberand comprehend the most virtuous, the ideal,depends on our doing so.

The analysis proceeds in five steps. First,cognition’s limits are related to the tendency tosimplify complex historical information intoone event or the achievement of one person.Second, the story of the rise of Rosa Parks issummarized, but it includes those forgottenprotestors who contributed as much as she tothe Montgomery bus boycott and shows how

this forgetting contributes to understanding ofthe boycott itself. In the third and fourth sec-tions of this paper, Rosa Parks’s case clarifiesthe determinants and functions of oneness,including condensation, the Matthew Effect,representation of cultural ideals, schematicdistortion, and resentment among the forgot-ten. Rosa Parks is the perfect specimen for thisstudy, for few other people is the ratio ofrenown to achievement so high. In the conclu-sion, this finding is generalized to other prob-lems of collective forgetting.

Oneness

Oneness is a confusing term beset by con-tradictory definitions: in the popular realm itconcerns singularity and uniqueness; in manyreligious belief systems, it is the condition ofbeing at one with fellow believers and tran-scendent powers. In this essay, oneness refersto the recognizing of one exceptional individ-ual and the ignoring of others, many of whommay have performed as well as or better thanthe one acclaimed. Oneness is loosely relatedto Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s(1973, 1974) concepts of “availability” and“anchoring.” These heuristics rely so heavilyon one person or event that they frequentlybias assessment and decision-making.

Oneness, as an adaptation to cognition’slimits, is always “realm-specific.” In baseball,for example, separate awards are given forbeing the “Most Valuable Player,” for the high-est batting average, most home runs, moststrikeouts, most wins, lowest earned run aver-age, and other offensive and defensiveachievements. Beauty pageants produce ageneral winner (Miss America) and winners invarious subcompetitions (talent, bathing suit,evening gown, congeniality). In the academicworld, awards are given in different disciplinesand subdisciplines for the most distinguishedcareers, books, and articles. The PulitzerPrizes, Academy Awards, Tony Awards, andNobel Prizes are also examples of singleawards given within different realms ofachievement These awards not only reflectsocieties’ need for multiple exemplars to artic-ulate multiple ideals, but also the conventionof exemplifying each ideal by one person. The


periodic (usually annual) acclaim of suchexemplars enlarges their prestige ritually.

Contingencies

The relationship between nature and con-vention, between cognitive capacity limits andthe practice of limiting recognition to singlerecipients, requires several qualifications:

First, working memory’s limit, accordingto most investigators, is four (Cowan 2005);therefore, nature alone cannot account for thephenomenon of oneness.

Second, cognitive limits can be transcend-ed at will. Baseball experts, for example, pos-sess vast knowledge of many categories ofoffensive and defensive performance. This ispossible because their working memoryencodes every relevant chunk of new informa-tion, transfers it to long-term memory, whereit is identified meaningfully through typing,classification, and schema, then stored withrelevant existing information. The constantinterplay between efficient encoding andorganizing of information in working andlong-term memory distinguishes “experts”from “novices” (Ericsson and Kinch 1995:239–40).

Third, many individuals are motivated toacquire vast knowledge in one or more realmsof activity (usually occupational); this meansthat oneness is the default option, not the soleoption, for human cognition. But individualsmastering one or more bodies of knowledgecannot master all there is to know. They, too,are “cognitive misers” because they oversim-plify reality by ignoring its “details;” but theyare also “motivated tacticians” because theirdeliberate ignoring of information allowsthem to attend to the most relevant and com-plex tasks. Short cuts, no less than prolongedattention to complex problems, are tacticallymotivated (Fiske and Taylor 1991:13).

Fourth, the more knowledge one has ofthe achievement realm within which a personis recognized, the more likely he or she willknow of others who have accomplished atleast as much or more. Selecting one personfor recognition is therefore most likely to pro-mote insider resentment.

Fifth, the singling out of winners rein-forces or undermines social structures.Among individualistic communities, “winner-take-all” situations are most common, whileegalitarian communities believe the singlingout of winners undermines group solidarityand individual esteem.2 Differentiation of afield also affects the feasibility of singleawards. Between 1902 and 1949, for example,85 percent of Nobel Prizes in physics weregiven to single recipients; 2 percent to 3 recip-ients. Between 1950 and 1999, single recipi-ents received only 26 percent of the awards; 3recipients received 38 percent. In six of thefirst seven years of the twenty-first century,three recipients shared the prize. Physics pro-duces more winners as it becomes a morecomplex and innovative science. It should benoted, however, that the Nobel Committee hasnever awarded its prize to more than threephysicists in any one year—a number wellwithin the working memory’s limits.

Sixth, the media through which informa-tion is transmitted restricts the amount anyindividual can possess. A history text candevote only a limited number of pages to agiven event; a newspaper or magazine, only somany columns; television and radio stations,only so many minutes (Hilgartner and Bosk1988). Media limits add to the effect of cogni-tive limits.

Finally, when no single representative canbe selected to symbolize a field of activity, thepool of “contestants” can be condensed into asingle unit and identified by their number. TheLittle Rock Nine, namely, the three boys andsix girls chosen by the NAACP to integrate theLittle Rock Central High School in 1957, is arelevant example. Nine individuals are easy toforget, but when condensed into one namethey are readily remembered.

Not all events in the collective memoryare symbolized by a single person or group. Inthe sport of baseball, for example, pairs andtrios often represent something special about ateam or an achievement. The Boston Braves of

2 Robert Frank and Philip Cook (1995) believe theUnited States, more than any other nation, deserves to becalled a “winner-take-all” society. For a related but betterdocumented analysis, see Seymour M. Lipset (1996).


the late 1940s depended heavily on two pitch-ers, Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain—hencethe cautious war cry: “Spahn and Sain, andpray for rain.” Likewise, early twentieth-cen-tury baseball fans represented the difficultdouble-play by its supposed virtuosi, “Tinkerto Evers to Chance.” In other fields, includingentertainment, duos and trios are recognizedindividually (Sonny and Cher), as are WorldWar II’s best known American leaders,Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and MacArthur(although these men represented separaterealms of activity [politics and the two the-aters of war]). Future work will determinewhether duos and trios are exceptions to, ordifferent forms of, oneness.

The concept of oneness describes anonuniversal but powerful tendency for indi-viduals and groups to simplify complex com-parisons by choosing one prominent per-former or entity. This tendency is reinforcedby memory’s limits, but such a hindrance doesnot itself limit recognition. Why, then, does aconventional limit—particularly the recogni-tion of one person—exaggerate a natural limitwhich, although severe, permits the recogni-tion of several people? Why is human conven-tion so stingy, why does it remember so fewand forget so many, what social realities doesit reinforce, and how does the answer to thesequestions bear on our general understandingof collective forgetting? Rosa Parks, as noted,is the case in point.

THE RISE OF ROSA PARKS

Forgotten Events and Protesters

Throughout the Jim Crow era, manyAfrican Americans rebelled against segregat-ed seating in public transportation, but theirnumber vastly increased after World War II.By the mid–1950s, defiance of bus segrega-tion had become common. A host of unrecog-nized men and women (“invisible leaders,” asBernice Barnett [1993] calls them [see alsoBarnett 1995; Hendrickson 2005]), precededRosa Parks. “Invisible leaders” are in factquite visible to scholars whose business it is tosearch for them; it is to the general public thatthey are unknown. The following chronology

includes a sample of the unknowns thatmarked the final decades of bus segregation.

July 1944. Irene Morgan (Anon 2001)refused to go to the back of a bus travelingfrom Virginia to Maryland. Her case went tothe Supreme Court, which ruled segregationin interstate travel to be unconstitutional (June3, 1946).

June 1953. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, aone-day bus boycott, followed three weekslater by a seven-day boycott, resulted in partialdesegregation of city buses.

May 21, 1954. Jo Ann Robinson, presi-dent of Montgomery, Alabama’s Womens’sPolitical Council, complained in a letter toMayor W.A. “Tacky” Gayle about humilia-tions endured by black bus passengers(including herself) and warned of a boycottagainst Montgomery’s bus company.

June 22, 1954–July 14, 1955. Sarah MaeFlemming filed suit against her removal froma Columbia, South Carolina bus. Her casefailed, but on appeal the Fourth Federal CircuitCourt ordered Columbia’s buses integrated.Bus companies in 16 other Southern citiesintegrated in compliance with the court ruling.Montgomery maintained its segregated buses,arguing that the Flemming decision applied toColumbia alone and, in any case, did notexplicitly deny that the Plessy-Ferguson (sep-arate but equal principle) applied to publictransportation.

March 2, 1955. In Montgomery, Alabama,Claudette Colvin refused to move to the backof a segregated bus; she was arrested, convict-ed, and fined.

April 19, 1955. Aurelia Browder ofMontgomery refused to take her legal busseat; she, too, was arrested, convicted, andfined.

October 21, 1955. Mary Louise Smith ofMontgomery was arrested, convicted, andfined for violating the city’s bus segregationcode. Several days later, Suzi McDonald wasarrested and fined for the same offense.

December 1, 1955. Rosa Parks was arrest-ed, then convicted and fined for refusing tosurrender her seat to a white passenger. Nextday, the Montgomery bus boycott, planned fora single day, went into effect.


December 3, 1955. Activist leaders ofMontgomery’s black community formed anew entity, The Montgomery ImprovementAssociation (MIA), in order to distance them-selves from conservative ministers and avoidlegal entanglements with the local NAACPbranch.3 The Association appointed MartinLuther King, Jr. as its president.

December 5, 1955. Several hours afterRosa Parks was fined, thousands gathered fora meeting at a local church under the blackcommunity’s new (MIA) leadership. King’sspeech electrified the audience, which votedto extend the boycott indefinitely.

February 1, 1956. Realizing that the boy-cott had failed to achieve its modest goals ofimproving courtesy and convenience within asegregated transportation system, attorneyFred Gray convinced his MIA colleagues tobring legal suit against the city. He namedBrowder, Colvin, Smith, McDonald, and oneother woman, Jeanetta Reese, as plaintiffsagainst Montgomery’s mayor, claiming thatbus segregation violated their 14thAmendment (equal protection) rights. JeanettaReese had also been ejected from aMontgomery bus for refusing to give up herseat,4 but she removed her name from the suitafter receiving threats on her life.

February 21, 1956. Rosa Parks, amongeighty-nine other black resisters, was arrestedand fingerprinted for violating the city’s anti-boycott law.

June 5, 1956. Six months after the filingof the Browder v. Gayle suit, the three-judgeFifth Federal Circuit Court ruled against thecity of Montgomery and its mayor. The cityimmediately appealed to the Supreme Court.

November 13, 1956. The US SupremeCourt upheld the district court ruling. Fiveweeks later (December 20) federal marshalsserved the enforcement order.

December 21, 1956. The NAACP markedthe desegregation order by asking Rosa Parksto pose for a photograph on a city bus. (A UPIreporter, sometimes taken for an irate whitepassenger, agreed to sit behind Mrs. Parks[Figure 1].)

Because pictorial information is morereadily remembered than verbal (MacInnisand Price 1987), this photograph reinforcedthe public’s belief in Rosa Parks as the motherof the civil rights movement. It also takes us tothe nub of the problem. Why did the NAACPchoose Rosa Parks to represent a boycott inwhich so many played equally importantroles? Why did it not include Aurelia Browder,Claudette Colvin, Mary Louise Smith, andSuzie McDonald—the successful plaintiffswhose suit ended bus segregation every-where? These very questions presuppose thepresence of agents— “reputational entrepre-neurs,” as Gary Fine (1996) calls them, pro-moting Rosa Parks’s reputation and renown(Lang and Lang 1991), but the activities ofthese admirers cannot explain her fame. Herfame, indeed, makes the success of her pro-moters a problem rather than an explanation.

Singling Out Rosa Parks

When two or more investigators make anidentical discovery within a short time span,Robert Merton (1957) observes, credit isassigned to the person who makes the discov-ery first. If this priority rule is generalized tosocial movements, then one must recognizethat Rosa Parks was last, not first, to challengeMontgomery’s bus segregation practice. AfterClaudette Colvin was arrested in March 1955,Jo Ann Robinson, president of the Women’sPolitical Council, E.D. Nixon, director of theMontgomery NAACP, and attorney Fred Graythought the youngster would be a good plain-tiff in a lawsuit to end bus segregation and agood symbol to mobilize Montgomery’sheretofore compliant (King 1958) black com-munity. But the plan fell through. Although amember of the NAACP youth organization,Miss Colvin was pregnant with a marriedman’s child. In October of 1955, eighteen-year-old Mary Louise Smith refused to giveup her bus seat, but her father’s alcoholism

3 For detail, see Fred Gray 1995. Gray’s advice turnedout to be prescient. On June 1, 1956, Alabama’s attorneygeneral claimed that the NAACP had not followed properregistration requirements and barred it from conductingbusiness in the state (Glennon 1991).

4 Dates of arrest for Reese and MacDonald areunknown.


ruled her out as a plaintiff and symbol. To theextent that Colvin and Smith deviated fromwhat Barnett (2007) calls “the cult of blackwomen’s respectability and womanhood,”their arrests, according to E.D. Nixon, wouldbe less likely to impress a court and arouse theindignation of Montgomery’s AfricanAmericans (Raines 1977). Little personalinformation on Suzie McDonald, who was 78at the time of her protest and arrest, is avail-able; however, the Montgomery police hadalso arrested Aurelia Browder, an NAACPmember and activist. Browder worked foryears as a seamstress, then finished highschool, entered college, and graduated withhonors with majors in mathematics and sci-ence. Not until Rosa Parks was arrested, how-

ever, did Robinson, Nixon, and Gray believethey had found the plaintiff and symbol theysought. At the time, Rosa Parks seemed tohave the attributes needed to be an effectiveplaintiff and symbol: (1) she had no skeletonsin her closet and (2) as NAACP secretary, shewas better known throughout the black com-munity than any of the other arrested women,including Browder (King 1958; Williams1987; Parks 1992).

Besides being secretary of theMontgomery branch of the NAACP, whichshe joined in 1943, Rosa Parks was a coun-selor in its youth group, a devoted churchmember, well-known and liked in the blackcommunity, acquainted with resistance lead-ers and attorneys. Because she had occupied a

Figure 1. Rosa Parks contemplates boycott victory. © Bettman/ CORBIS


legal bus seat—to be relinquished only to astanding white passenger—the NAACP couldnot have known beforehand about Mrs. Parks’sdecision to make her protest. Nevertheless,they assisted her with legal aid immediately,beginning with bail within hours of her arrest,and assembled considerable numbers toaccompany her to court. “When they messedwith her, they messed with the WRONGONE” was often repeated during the days fol-lowing Rosa Parks’s arrest (Durr 2006:108,emphasis added). But this arrest plays a minorpart in the boycott’s history.

The full story of the Montgomery busboycott is the story of black representativesconfronting Montgomery municipal officials,even as their homes are bombed and their fam-ilies threatened; of black attorneys counteringcity and state legal maneuvers; of weeklymeetings in churches (also bombing targets)to reinforce the motivation of the protestors;of ordinary people struggling to maintain theirlivelihood by pooling resources and support-ing one another. In these stories Rosa Parksplays no visible role. Reverend Robert Graetz,white minister of Montgomery’s blackLutheran congregation and active boycott sup-porter, reports: “Sadly, Mrs. Parks had verylittle to do with the boycott. Once it was pastthe beginning, she faded into the background”(Graetz 1991:113). Between her Februaryarrest and the November Supreme Court deci-sion, Rosa Parks traveled the country onspeaking engagements, but she had no part inthe front line of battle, as did Graetz. Besidesmaking his own fundraising trips, Graetzserved as secretary of the MontgomeryImprovement Association, was particularlyhated by white segregationists, lived undercontinual surveillance, suffered nightly tele-phone threats on his children’s lives, andendured an attempted murder and two bomb-ings (Graetz 1991).

Fred Gray, Montgomery ImprovementAssociation’s attorney, was also exposed to awide range of harassment. While threatenedwith disbarment and summoned for review ofhis draft status by Montgomery’s SelectiveService Board, Gray designed and executedthe Browder vs. Gayle action. His role in the

Supreme Court’s bus desegregation decisionwas indispensable (Gray 1995; Burns 1997).

Nevertheless, Rosa Parks emerged as thesymbol of the struggle and the victory.

When Rosa Parks Became a NationalCelebrity

Two problems must be distinguished: thefirst is to find the basis for Rosa Parks’srenown; the second is to explain why thatrenown was accorded to no resister but her.The first problem is easiest to solve becauseRosa Parks was an insider. Not only localelites, including E.D. Nixon and Vernon Johnsbut also Martin Luther King Jr. and RalphAbernathy, who would soon become nationalcelebrities, knew her and were impressed byher quiet dignity. Fred Gray wanted RosaParks to be lead plaintiff in his federal case,but her December 5th conviction was stillpending in the Alabama appeals court andcould not be heard in a federal court until thestate had acted. To wait might postpone thecase indefinitely; therefore, Gray moved for-ward with Aurelia Browder.

Two contingencies made Rosa Park’sinsidership relevant to her renown. First, andcrucially, the city of Montgomery invited theMontgomery Improvement Association, rep-resented by a twelve-person committee, tonegotiate a compromise. At the first meeting,three days after the boycott began, protesterspresented their demands—more driver cour-tesy, first-come, first-serve seating for blacksfrom the back of the bus to the front, and thehiring of black drivers for buses serving main-ly African-American communities. None ofthese demands required the integration of citybuses, but the mayor’s committee refused toaccept them. Negotiations resumed onDecember 17 and December 19, but the city,again, offered no concessions, and negotia-tions ended.5 If the city had agreed to the pro-testers’ modest demands, modeled after rulesin other segregated Alabama cities, the boy-

5 Negotiations between the city and the MontgomeryImprovement Association are described in detail byMartin Luther King, Jr., the Association’s spokesman(King 1958).


cott would have ended, and Rosa Parks wouldhave been forgotten.

Montgomery’s “Get Tough Policy” wasthe second contingency affecting Rosa Parks’splace in history. After eight days of investiga-tion, a grand jury found that 90 protesters hadviolated an “anti-boycott” law adopteddecades earlier to prevent labor collusionagainst local business establishments. Theindictments named many prominent black cit-izens, including attorneys, political leaders, 24clergymen, and Rosa Parks. Each defendantchose to exercise his or her right to be tried bya judge. Not until March 21 did the state beginits first prosecution, that of Martin LutherKing. Defense attorneys brought in witnessesto describe the bus company’s treatment ofAfrican Americans, and national press ser-vices broadcast their testimony. King was con-victed, but 89 cases remained.

Meanwhile, membership in the segrega-tionist White Citizens Council doubled;Montgomery’s mayor and police commission-er added themselves to the number while othersegregationists began a program of intimida-tion and violence against the city’s black citi-zens (Walker 2007). The government with-drew licenses from taxi drivers who loweredrates for boycotters, ticketed automobiles car-rying them to work, forbade carpools to pickup passengers on public property, and triedunsuccessfully to disrupt the boycott bybroadcasting false information about its reso-lution.

As Rosa Parks faced more charges, moreAmericans watched her. She refused to pay the$14 fine imposed for her December 1, 1955violation and on February 22, 1956 was sen-tenced to 14 days in jail. Appealing to theState Supreme Court, she was released onbond. She was also arrested on the antiboycottcharge, fingerprinted under the eyes and cam-eras of the press, and indicted. At this time,when the state’s mass prosecutions dominatednational attention, Rosa Parks’s nameappeared most frequently in the media. In onenewspaper source, Newspaperarchive.com, alarge but imperfectly representative collectionof small town and medium-size city newspa-pers, 21 articles mentioned Rosa Parksbetween December 1 and December 31,

1955—the first 4 weeks of the boycott. For theentire year of 1955, there was no mention ofother bus resisters. In January 1956, the sec-ond month of the boycott, Rosa Parks’s nameappeared three times. During the Februaryenactment of the “Get Tough” policy, the num-ber of Rosa Parks mentions rose to 46, thenfell to 21 in March and 6 in April.6 February’speak followed the filing in federal districtcourt of the Browder vs. Gayle suit to end seg-regation of Montgomery’s buses.

Apotheosis

In early 1956, no one knew or could haveknown how brilliantly the light of the massmedia would soon shine on Rosa Parks andhow much more intensely it would shine asdecades passed. Indeed, when Rosa Parks diedin her Detroit home in October 2005, fiftyyears after the boycott, state and local estab-lishments reacted with unprecedented defer-ence. Following the pattern of a “royalprogress,” the ceremonial form by whichkings and queens take possession of theirrealm (Geertz 1983), the NAACP moved herbody to Montgomery’s St. Paul A.M.E.church, where she had been a member. Manyofficials, including the U.S. Secretary of State,participated in the service. Throughout thecity, the first row of seats on all busesremained empty in her memory. FromMontgomery, her body was flown to theBaltimore-Washington International Airport,named after Thurgood Marshall, with whomFred Gray consulted during the legal battle.The motorcade, accompanied by a symbolic1955-era bus, carried her remains to the U.S.Capitol Rotunda, where they were placed instate. Emergency legislation, initiated by theMichigan House delegation led by JohnConyers and signed by the president, providedfor this honor, previously reserved for presi-dents, statesmen, and military heroes. Aftersigning a bill authorizing a statue of RosaParks to be erected in the U.S. CapitolBuilding, the President of the United States

6 These counts were made in September 2006. Sincethen, Newspaperarchive.com has added additional news-papers and issues to its existing holdings.


ordered all flags to be flown at half-staff; heand other federal officials visited the Rotundaprivately to pay their respects. Then the greatRotunda doors were opened and tens of thou-sands wound their way around the militaryguard and coffin.

Mrs. Parks’s remains were next moved toDetroit’s Greater Grace Temple for a seven-hour service. Entertainers, including ArethaFranklin, civil rights leaders, and political andbusiness leaders attended, as did Michigan’stwo senators and many House members, blackpoliticians from many states, and prominentwhite figures including Bill Clinton, HillaryClinton, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, and BillFord, CEO of Ford Motor Company. Her bodywas finally placed on a gold-trimmed horse-drawn carriage for the seven-mile processionto the cemetery. The release of scores of dovescoincided with her arrival and entombment.

Commemoration: Primary Vehicle of Oneness

The affirmation of Rosa Parks’s renown isfar more evident in commemorative formsthan in historical statements. History involvesthe recording of events over time; commemo-ration is the lifting from the historical recordof events that best symbolize society’s ideals.The source materials of history are written,printed, oral, and visual documents; commem-oration employs icons, statues, monuments,shrines, place names, eulogies, and ritualobservances. History informs; commemora-tion inspires and motivates (Schwartz 2001).

History and commemoration, each per-forming its own function, constitute collectivememory. In 2006, for example, there was onlyone Nobel Prize chemistry winner, but the his-tory of chemistry preserves the accomplish-ments of all its researchers. In the field of racerelations, history texts tell more aboutClaudette Colvin, Mary Smith, and AureliaBrowder than do commemorative media,which barely recognize them at all. As noted,“invisible leaders” (Barnett 1993) are quitevisible: anyone writing a term paper or essayon any one of them can find plenty of pub-lished information. But such information isavailable only to those who have reason tolook. For most people, commemoration alone

tells who is worth remembering and why.Collective forgetting, then, is relative to one’sreference frame. Neither history nor com-memoration is a privileged site for knowingthe past because each represents the past dif-ferently: the former chronicles it; the latterpublicly celebrates it. History, in its pure form,is inclusive of every significant facet of anevent; commemoration, in its pure form, isselective, highlighting an event’s most signifi-cant moral feature.

That commemoration, not history, pre-serves Rosa Parks’s oneness was never moreevident than when she lay in state in the U.S.Capitol Rotunda. She was honored so spectac-ularly, according to CNN’s announcer GaryNurenberg 2005), because the remarkablegains of the civil rights movement resultedfrom the will of “one woman on one bus inMontgomery fifty years ago.” Joseph Lowery(2005) agreed: “Yes, she sat down so we couldstand up .|.|.|.She was the one woman whomGod chose to do extraordinary things.”

These quotations are eulogistic, not his-torical, statements, and their distinctive fea-ture is redundancy. The list would be tediouswere it not produced by such a wide array ofpeople—black and white, liberal and conserv-ative, Southern and non-Southern. “RosaParks proved one person can make a differ-ence.|.|.|.Her single act of defiance changedAmerica for the better,” said businessman andauthor Paul Lawrence Vann (2005). InReverend Al Sharpton’s (2005) view, “she sin-gularly on December 1, 1955, tore down thewalls of American segregation and apartheid.”Rosa Parks also “single-handedly changed thelandscape of the South.|.|.|.She showed thatone individual can move a community toaction.” U.S Representative Arthur Davis(2005) of Alabama, at least, believed as much.U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan(2005), likewise, declared that “With a singleact, she changed the course of history.” Thelist is long and the point unchangeable: “Shetaught us all that one person.|.|.could spark aworld of change.” “In one single day, RosaParks made the world face the cause of equal-ity, civil rights and justice.” “Her lonely act ofdefiance sparked a movement that ended legalsegregation in America.” Thus spake


Michigan Republican Party Chairman SaulAnuzis (2005), California Governor ArnoldSchwarzenegger (2005), and U.S. SenatorDiane Feinstein of California (2005).

Some observers insist that Rosa Parks wasnot the only person, not even the central per-son, in the civil rights movement (Loeb 2005);but they list none of the others and offer noexplanation for why they have been forgotten.They ignore the main problem: what is therein the nature of commemoration that preventsall significant activists from sharing therenown bestowed on one?

Because commemoration could not per-form its function if it were not selective, theoutpouring of attention on Rosa Parks wouldhave been impossible if she had to share thespotlight with other women, including thosewho risked as much, enjoyed less protection,and displayed as much courage. What if thefederal government had to organize spectacu-lar funerals for the entire cast of resisters?CNN announcer Carol Lin, present at theCapitol Rotunda when Mrs. Parks laid in state,raised this question simply and clearly:“Really, I think people are grasping what itmust have been like for this woman back in1955 to be so brave” (italics added). Manywomen back in 1955 were brave, but if allthese women received their due, grasping“what it must have been like” would be diffi-cult. Multiple commemoration rites—themaking of the calendar into something resem-bling a sequence of funeral and awardannouncements–would make incoherent thevery ideal these rites were meant to affirm.

DETERMINANTS OF ONENESS

Condensation

The sole figure of a black woman whorefused to give up her seat to a white passen-ger is more easily representable than all theMontgomery women who worked on behalf ofcivil rights. Foreshadowing a fundamentalpremise of cognitive psychology, EmileDurkheim ([1915] 1965) declared: “we areunable to consider an abstract entity, which wecan represent only laboriously and confusedly,the source of the strong sentiments which wefeel. We cannot explain them to ourselves

except by connecting them to some concreteobject of whose reality we are vividly aware”(251). This “concrete [singular] object,” RosaParks, helps represent morally and emotional-ly what the civil rights movement meant to itsbeneficiaries. Promoting attachment ratherthan enlightenment, the image of Rosa Parksencouraged commitment to the civil rightsmovement as an undifferentiated whole. Shewas, as Sherry Ortner (1973) would defineher, the civil rights movement’s “summarizingsymbol.”

Walter Bagehot ([1872] 1978), however,was the first to discuss oneness as a summa-rizing symbol. Writing in the early 1870s,Bagehot, a Briton, assessed the role of themonarch in the English constitution (37):

[W]e have whole classes unable to comprehendthe ideas of a constitution—unable to feel theleast attachment to impersonal laws. Most doindeed vaguely know that there are some otherinstitutions besides the Queen, and some rules bywhich she governs. But a vast number.|.|.dwellmore upon her than upon anything else, andtherefore she is inestimable. Such is the mentali-ty of the “vacant many” who “have but hazynotions as to obeying laws without a queen”(39).

Bagehot’s condescension toward the ordi-nary people of Great Britain, his belief that theQueen is necessary as “a visible symbol ofunity to those still so imperfectly educated asto need a symbol” (45) should not blind us tothe similarity between the single monarch andsingle civil rights heroine. If reverence for theQueen is a substitute for political understand-ing, then admiration for Rosa Parks mayreflect the “vacant many’s” understanding ofthe long story of the Montgomery bus boy-cott–and, beyond that, the civil rights move-ment. To grasp these events, the people mustrevere the one person they can envision, notthe many they cannot envision. To graspevents in this way, however, is to find themmeaningful, not necessarily true.

Matthew Effect

In the first phase of her public career,Rosa Parks symbolized a local resistance cam-paign, but as her renown grew she became dis-


sociated from local protest and situated on thenational scene. The mother of a bus boycottbecame the “mother of the civil rights move-ment.” As the media broadcast the image ofRosa Parks, it grew, as Edward Sapir (1930)would have said, “deeper and deeper roots inthe unconscious and diffused its emotionalquality to types of behavior or situationsapparently far removed from [its] originalmeaning” (493).

Robert Merton’s (1968) “Matthew Effect”describes the process which broadened RosaParks’s symbolic power. The Gospel ofMatthew (25:29) is Merton’s source: “For untoevery one that hath shall be given, and he shallhave abundance, but from him that hath notshall be taken away even that which he hath.”The Matthew Effect is actually a variant ofwhat general systems scholars call “postivefeedback,” a process that creates new mean-ings by converting initial responses into virtu-ous cycles (Buckley 1967). Observers reacttoward the beneficiaries of recognition inways that exaggerate their initial prestige andcause competitors to be forgotten. The benefi-ciary is invited to events, seated next to lead-ers, and asked to judge the merit of others’traits and achievements. (For a listing ofawards and symbols of academic recognition,see Boring 1959) The Matthew Effect thusvindicates earlier reward decisions, regardlessof whether or not they were the wisest.

The fate of Rosa Parks exemplifies thepower of the Matthew Effect. Merton’s NobelPrize winners, however worthy of their recog-nition, accomplished real things; Rosa Parks’srecognition was based on ascribed, notachieved, status. Nevertheless, her initialrecognition set off a virtuous cycle: sheaccompanied Martin Luther King, RalphAbernathy, E.D. Nixon, and other leaders ontrips around the country to raise funds for theMontgomery Improvement Association.Invited to national NAACP meetings, she metfor the first time such celebrities as A. PhilipRandolph, Roy Wilkins, and EleanorRoosevelt. Highlander School in Tennessee,where she once studied nonviolent resistance,recruited her to teach a course on reform tac-tics, as if she were the boycott’s tactician. Her

rewards accumulated while other resisterswatched.

However, as Rosa Parks’s renown grew,she and her husband lost their jobs. Why noone was willing or able to help them is a ques-tion rarely raised, let alone answered. She hadalways wanted to live outside Montgomery,but no one can say why she moved to Detroitwhen she did. Rosa Parks’s friend and sup-porter Virginia Durr (2006) simply notes:“Poor woman, she finally had to go to Detroit,she could not make it here after she got sick.”Mrs. Parks’s sickness is undefined, and shefound work after leaving Montgomery. Mrs.Durr also makes a peculiar comment about herold friend’s character: “she was such a fineand firm person, not exactly concrete but atleast mighty firm asphalt” (152). All that canbe said for certain, then, is that Rosa Parkswas unable to convert her renown into finan-cial benefit. Even after moving to Detroit,where part of the Parks family resided, shefound no suitable employment and had toaccept a guesthouse supervisor job atHampton (Virginia) College. She returned toDetroit when the college administrationrefused to provide living quarters for both herand her husband. She eventually found aseamstress job at a small shop in Detroit, andfor seven years, 1958 to 1965, worked whileaccepting invitations to speak around thecountry and receiving awards, including hon-orary membership in the recently formedSouthern Christian Leadership Conference.Her extraordinary renown remained indepen-dent of her precarious personal life, whichshows that the Matthew principle is not a gen-eral reward machine.

Rosa Parks’s rewards were largely sym-bolic, but by early 1964 her influence hadgrown to the point where she convincedMartin Luther King to renounce his politicalneutrality and campaign on behalf of African-American Democrat John Conyers for theHouse of Representatives. King’s support ledConyers to victory, and Parks worked for himas a secretary and receptionist, even whilemaintaining her busy travel schedule, until sheretired at age 75 in September 1988 (Brinkley2000). Her renown continued to grow evenafter retirement: she was invited to appear


around the country and the world, met withheads of state, including Pope John Paul, andshe received the Presidential Medal ofFreedom and Congressional Gold Medal. Shefound places named for her: 21 streets in 14states; 32 public and commercial establish-ments in 13 states. Not one comparable site isnamed for the other bus segregation resisters.7

FUNCTIONS OF ONENESS

Up to now, we have described the rise ofRosa Parks’s singular prestige and placed it inthe context of the resistance movement fromwhich it arose. Rosa Parks personified a spe-cific realm of activity—active resistanceagainst the everyday agents of bus segrega-tion. She stood with and for the black commu-nity’s ordinary men and women. MartinLuther King, Jr. also achieved renown, but hedid no walking or carpooling; he boycotted nobuses. King dominated the realm of boycottleadership. While Rosa Parks’s apotheosissent Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, andother women into obscurity, King overshad-owed Ralph Abernathy and left in darknessE.D. Nixon, Fred Gray, Robert Graetz, andother indispensable leaders.

The problem, however, remains: why isremembering the one and forgetting the manyso necessary to collective memory? Toexplore this problem Rosa Parks’s state funer-al, again, provides the best example. Whensomeone dies, according to Emile Durkheim([1915] 1965), the group feels a loss andreacts by ritual assemblage. Sentiments areintensified when affirmed collectively; sorrowbecomes exalted and amplified as it migratesfrom mind to mind. Each person “is carriedalong by the others; a veritable panic of sor-row results” (Durkheim [1915] 1965:446).But Rosa Parks’s ritual was more than a mat-ter of crowd contagion.

Rosa Parks’s renown reflects mainly onthe illusions of achievement about which col-lective memory constructionists, includingJohn Bodnar (1992), John Gillis (1994), and

Eviatar Zerubavel (2003) have so much to say.That she was the mother of the Civil RightsMovement is false. That she was first to chal-lenge bus segregation in Alabama is false.That she spearheaded the struggle againstMontgomery’s white establishment is false.That hers was a “test case” against segregationis false. It was Martin Luther King, Jr., E.D.Nixon, and Ralph Abernathy, not Rosa Parks,who mobilized the black community to resistbus segregation. It was Fred Gray who devisedthe law suit that ended bus segregation. It wasAurelia Browder whom Gray chose for his testcase.

Given the limits of human cognition, how-ever, complete information confuses. If wesaw all there was to be seen of the 13-monthboycott, if we experienced the long walk towork by everyone unable to find a ride, if weheard and read what every participant saidabout the boycott and how it affected them, ifwe could grasp every aspect of it, the resultwould be not understanding but perplexity.The action of a single individual, on the otherhand, is easy to grasp and remember. Nothingmakes this clearer than the way human natureand society protect us from remembering toomuch.

Oneness: Font of Idealism

Nature limits the power of cognition, butsociety alone can press these limits to the ser-vice of oneness. If a single person, by dint ofunusual achievement, separates himself fromothers, then he is symbolizing, within a givenrealm of action, a transcendent ideal.“Singling out” and “setting examples,” there-fore, do more than reward individuals; theyperform moral functions;8 they provide thecommunity with concrete exemplars of itsstandards, virtues, and powers. Society is

7 Information is drawn from www.melissadata.com andwww.referenceusa.com.

8 That morality and sentiment are constituents of cog-nition and oneness, including the oneness of Rosa Parks,is a classical insight originating in antiquity (logos,pathos, and ethos). In more recent times, this trichotomyhas been developed by Parson’s (1951) analysis of cogni-tive, cathectic, and evaluative modes of orientation, andexpanded by Norbert Schwartz’s (1998) discussion of the“warmer” and “more social” aspects of cognition.


indifferent as to who stands for its definingideals, as long as these are represented.

The underlying structure of the ideal is itssingularity. According to the Standard CollegeDictionary (1963), an ideal is “1. a thing con-ceived as an ultimate object of attainment. 2. aperson or thing taken as a standard of perfec-tion.” As an “ultimate object of attainment” or“standard of perfection,” the ideal can only beconceived as a single thing and only repre-sented as such. As an adjective, too, an ideal“1. conforms to an absolute standard of excel-lence; embodying or exemplifying perfection;2. representing the best of its kind” (665). Inthese representative statements the ideal isnever plural; it is a unique model to whichpeople orient their aspirations and conduct.

It may be said, without twisting the termtoo much, that there is something “sacred”about ideals and their symbols. In modernsocieties, the sacred, according to EmileDurkheim, surrounds every individual, andmodern societies are sustained by what hecalls the “cult of the individual” ([1911]1974:58–9). The wider the diffusion of sacred-ness, the more individuals are entitled to ritu-al displays of respect (Goffman 1967). But if“objects become sacred and judgmentsattribute value when they reflect a socialideal” (Durkheim [1911]1974: xxv, 92–3),then this ideal must dramatize the gap betweenordinary and extraordinary events and beings.To separate these two realms so fiercely, it istrue, makes them incommensurable, while inreality the difference between them is often amatter of small degree—or even judgmenterror. Nevertheless, society cannot do withoutthis difference, this oneness, because it cannotsustain itself without creating ideals in its var-ious spheres (Durkheim [1911] 1974). This iswhy, “in the present day as in the past, we seesociety constantly creating sacred things outof ordinary ones” (Durkheim [1915]1965:245).

Sacred things cannot be adored, however,if their aura is blurred by competitors. Thegreater the number of beaux ideals within anyrealm of activity, the more ambiguous theirreferent becomes. The natural limits of cogni-tion, therefore, reinforce the ideals which

express a culture’s most valued traits andachievements.

Oneness, Schema, and Reality

What is owed to the principle of onenesscan be known by imagining the result of ourdoing without it. Remove Rosa Parks, and theaverage person will have a much vaguernotion of both the origins of the civil rightsmovement and the ideals that drove it. RemoveRosa Parks, and the story of a wronged inno-cent is replaced by tedious details about car-pools, pickup points, fundraising, weeklyMIA meetings, petty internal disputes—details which conceal the meaning of the larg-er struggle.

Rosa Parks’s story is “schematic” (Fiskeand Taylor 1991; Bartlett [1932] 1995;DiMaggio 1997) because it simplifies theMontgomery protests and aligns them withclassical stories of oppressed people’s strugglefor justice. A humble seamstress finishes aday of hard work, boards a bus, pays her fare,takes a seat, is ordered to move to the back ofthe bus when a white passenger appears, andrefuses because she is tired of a lifetime ofhumiliation. She is arrested, tried, and fined.Montgomery’s longsuffering black communi-ty, angered by her arrest, boycotts the city’sbuses for a year, forcing the white governmentto relent and desegregate. Such is the schemaabstracted from Rosa Parks’s conduct. Peoplewho cannot remember the bus boycott as awhole can retrieve the schema in which its ele-ments are stored. A mild woman’s run-in withan angry bus driver in a Jim Crow city sums itup.9

The story makes for a self-flattering aswell as concise account: segregation is con-quered by the iron will of a tyrannized com-munity, exemplified by a black seamstress, notby a white court and its judges. Indeed, thenarrative presumes that federal courts would

9 A schema is a cognitive framework that simplifiescomplex events or people and links them to prior experi-ence. Those who lack a schema for football, for example,will understand and remember less about a game thanthose able to locate each action within the game’s frame-work of rules and traditions (see, for example, DiMaggio1997).


have ruled against integration if not pressuredby black resistance. “So when you ask why thecourts had to come in,” JoAnn Robinson,President of the Women’s Political Council,explains, “they had to come in. You get 52,000people in the streets and nobody’s showingany fear, something had to give. So theSupreme Court had to rule that segregationwas not the way of life” (Williams 1987:71,89). Robinson’s statement has two implica-tions: (1) the boycott broke the back of thesegregationists by putting unbearable pressureon the bus company and downtown mer-chants, and (2) the boycott forced the courts torule against the city. Both implications under-estimate the autonomy of the courts and over-estimate the power of public demonstrations.

Long before Montgomery’s boycottbegan, the Supreme Court had handed down aseries of liberal decisions on jury selection,housing, public education, voting rights, pro-fessional school integration, and equal accessto publicly funded resources, including golfcourses, swimming pools, beach houses, andpublic parks. By the time of the Brown deci-sion in 1954, which was not made under thepressure of public protest, little was left of thePlessy-Ferguson principle. Furthermore, theFifth Circuit Court’s unpressured integrationof Columbia, South Carolina’s bus system inJanuary 1956 makes implausible the claimthat a boycott forced the Fifth Circuit Court tointegrate Montgomery’s bus system inNovember 1956.

Martin Luther King believed the Browderdecision was significant because it broke thedeadlock between resisters and the city(Williams 1987:89). In fact, there was nodeadlock. After eleven months, the black com-munity was far worse off than the white, andthe city had no incentive to give in. When anAlabama circuit court was about to prohibitthe use of car pools, the boycott was, in fact,on the verge of collapse (Glennon 1991), andit would have collapsed had not the federaldistrict court issued its Browder ruling. Therewas no direct cause and effect relationship,observes legal scholar Robert J. Glennon,“between the boycott and the end of segregat-ed buses in Montgomery.” The Browder case“could have proceeded without the attendant

boycott and the Court result would have beenidentical” (93). Put differently, Montgomery’sbuses would have been integrated whether ornot Rosa Parks had given up her seat.

On the other hand, court decisions alonecould not end public hostility or segregation.During and immediately after the boycott, thehomes of Martin Luther King, Jr. RalphAbernathy, and Robert Graetz were bombedor damaged. Shots were fired at the Kinghome. Four churches were bombed, and manyother acts of violence were committed againstboycott leaders and followers (Robinson1987). After Montgomery’s buses were inte-grated, ten years passed before Montgomerydesegregated its schools and other publicfacilities. In many other cities, buses remainedsegregated. Local stalling tactics and violencedelayed the progress of integration every-where.

The memory of the Gray/Browder litiga-tion has been, in any case, replaced by themore resonant story of Rosa Parks’s defianceand an oppressed black community arising onits own to overcome white oppression. But ifthe Rosa Parks story distorts history, its appealdoes not reside in its distortion. Rosa Parks’soccupying the fateful bus seat, her arrest, andsubsequent apotheosis are real episodes in ahistoric movement. Her renown, whatever theNAACP’s role in creating it, keeps alive thememory of 381 days of authentic courage,perseverance, and sacrifice.

But to affirm the reality of what RosaParks symbolized does not mean she con-tributed to it as much as is commonlybelieved. Any federal suit againstMontgomery bus segregation by a noncontro-versial plaintiff would have probably succeed-ed. On the other hand, Rosa Parks’s personali-ty was unique; if she had somehow disap-peared from Montgomery after her arrest, noone can say for certain whether any of theplaintiffs—Browder, Colvin, Franklin, orMcDonald—could have assumed her symbol-ic role. There was nothing inevitable about asingle resister symbolizing the boycott, butonce a representative symbol was chosen, ithad to stand alone.

Was Rosa Parks chosen as the boycott’ssymbol because she was somehow better qual-


ified than other women or because she bettermet MIA’s strategic needs? The question isdifficult. She was certainly not the first ormost courageous in the matter of active resis-tance or first to be considered a lead plaintiff.Rosa Parks was selected because of a combi-nation of traits: she was not only an NAACPinsider but also a quiet, churchgoing womanwith no hidden vices. Rosa Parks could bewhat Colvin or Franklin could not be, and thatis a pure celebrity, not in the sense of a personknown for being known, but for being themost persuasive representative of her peers.That she could have done so better thanAuriela Browder, or for that matter, the lessobscure and more active Jo Ann Robinson, isdebatable. But the main point is that once shewas chosen, her renown would have beendiminished if someone else were placedbeside her.

The boycott’s consequence, then, wasreal, but not in the way we usually think aboutit. As a cause of bus segregation’s demise itseffect was questionable; its true function was(1) to enhance the dignity and solidarity of theblack community by demonstrating its mem-bers’ willingness to go to jail for their beliefs(Valien 1989), which whites were unpreparedto do when the courts ruled against them; (2)to impress the legitimacy of black grievanceson fair-minded whites; (3) to draw nationalattention to the cause of racial justice; and (4)to inspire boycotts in other places.

To represent every protester as dramati-cally as Rosa Parks and every leader as clear-ly as Martin Luther King—and this point can-not be overemphasized—would confound, notclarify, the meaning and consequence of theirstruggle. In 1955, it would have made no dif-ference if one of Mrs. Parks’s peers had beenchosen to be mother of the Civil RightsMovement, but once a unique presence isestablished it becomes indispensable. “Thebus driver could have been any other driver,”observed Washington Times commentatorSuzanne Fields (2005:A21), “but only RosaParks could have been Rosa Parks.”10 In fact,

Rosa Parks symbolizes a revolution of suchsignificance as to make her selection over oth-ers a trivial matter. Her aura resides in thesocial realities she marks.

Resentment

Rosa Parks’s case is important becauseher renown is sustained by forgotten heroesand heroines—people who deserve to beremembered and resent not getting their due.The numerous writers who have interviewedthe boycott’s participants know intuitively thatthe “shadow effect” of resentment(McLaughlin and Miller 2004) is a commonentailment of oneness.11 “She made some-thing out of what I started,” declared ClaudetteColvin of Rosa Parks (Kitchen 2005).Attorney Fred Gray echoed Colvin’s wordswhen he explained that it was she, Claudette,who inspired Montgomery’s black leadershipto take action against the city. If a 15-year oldchild can stand up to segregation, Graydeclared, then adults must do the same.Without her example, Montgomery’s blackcitizens would not have defied segregation(McGrew 2005a).

Likewise, Aurelia Browder’s son Butlerobserved that monuments had been built tohonor Rosa Parks, but “my mother has beenall but forgotten.” (Even Martin Luther KingJr. failed to mention her in his [1958] recount-ing of the decisive action of the federal districtcourt.) Many still believe, in fact, that RosaParks was the lead plaintiff in the case againstthe city of Montgomery, and Butler Browderdespairs at his constant need of having to cor-rect them. “It was Aurelia Browder who“changed the laws that applied to segregation”(McGrew 2005b). Boycott leaders were equal-ly resentful. E.D. Nixon was pained to knowthat his decades of achievements, culminating

10 The discourtesy of driver James F. Blake was moreimportant than Ms. Field believes. Rosa Parks herself

declared that if she had recognized Blake to be the manwho ejected her from his bus in 1943, she would havewaited for the next bus (and probably not have beenarrested).

11 See Douglas Brinkley’s (2000) discussion ofMontgomery leaders’ envy of Rosa Parks. BerniceBarnett, who interviewed Claudette Colvin and other boy-cott workers, was struck by the intensity of their feelingsof being unfairly deprived of recognition. Personal com-munication, February 15, 2007.


in the boycott, are ignored. [H] istory,” he said,“ought to be written true. Give him [MartinLuther King] all he earned, but don’t rob me”(cited in Baldwin and Woodson 1992: 65; seealso Garrow 1989). The Matthew Effect,whereby rewards build on themselves, oper-ates transparently in this case. E. D. Nixon wasone of the bus boycott’s key directors, butwhen NAACP officials decided to informtheir membership about the boycott’s details,they called in Rosa Parks. That Nixon took outhis resentment on Rosa Parks is therefore nosurprise. Once a warm friend, he denouncedher as a “lovely, stupid woman” (Brinkley2000:175 ).

Like E.D. Nixon, Ralph Abernathybelieved his own role to be indispensable.Ambitious men like Jesse Jackson andAndrew Young “didn’t realize.|.|.the degree towhich Martin depended on me for counselwhen we were alone and how many of hisideas originated with me” (1989: 479).Abernathy never openly resented King forovershadowing him, but his biography, pub-lished after King’s death, exposes King’s habitof plagiarizing passages for sermons andspeeches and describes his extramarital affairswhile on Southern Christian LeadershipConference business.12 Earlier, Abernathy dis-placed his resentment from King to RosaParks, belittling her as a mere functionary andmocking her husband as a “frightened lush”(Brinkley 2000:175–6).

Resentment is a reaction against unfair-ness, and many of Rosa Parks’s contempo-raries believed she had received more than shedeserved. What, then, can be said, in a gener-al way, about those whose accomplishmentsher commemoration obscures?

CONCLUSION

Attention, as noted in this essay’s openingpages, refers to the way men and womenselect the stimuli to which they wish to

respond. Yet, selective attention would beunnecessary if individuals could attend toeverything. They select deliberately becausetheir cognitive limitations allow them no alter-native.

Man’s limited memory is understood bet-ter now than ever before, but the questionremains as to why a humanly instituted deficitshould be added to a natural one. Put differ-ently, if working memory’s capacity wereindependent of culture, then this essay wouldbe about the symbolic power of fourness, notoneness, for human working memory readilymanages several chunks of information. Themost natural path, then, would be to recognizethe several best home-run hitters, strikeoutleaders, and golden glove champions. Butsocial conventions are limited by, not hostageto, nature. The limits of nature, on the otherhand, depending on their qualities, are morelikely to reinforce, if not directly contribute to,the formation of some social conventions thanothers.

Condensation (a cognitive heuristic) andthe Matthew Effect (a social process) worktogether, transforming fourness into oneness(nature into culture) by deliberately simplify-ing complexity, distinguishing one contributorto a project and forgetting others, thus sym-bolizing the ideals these contributors and thisproject pursue. The power of oneness is in thissense overdetermined: however weak theMatthew Effect in promoting any one reputa-tion, human memory limits recognition—sometimes to one person or event, alwaystoward one. Even if man’s working and long-term memory capacities were greater, theMatthew Effect’s positive feedback processwould limit recognition— sometimes to oneperson or event, always toward one. Cognitivedeficit, thus, reinforces rather than createssociety’s need to represent its ideals withunique symbols.

Oneness exaggerates the qualities of per-sons above the boundary of recognition anddiminishes the qualities of those below, buthow does oneness affect our understanding?We need to know how condensation and theMatthew Effect, acting together, induce andsustain this result. What does this interaction

12 Leaders were not King’s only critics. In the Browdervs. Gayle hearing, Auriela Browder reiterated the often-stated claim that “Montgomery made King.” She testifiedthat the people, not Martin Luther King, conducted theboycott: “We employed him to be our mouthpiece” (Burns1997:34).


tell us about the fundamental nature of one-ness itself?

Psychologist Edwin Boring (1963:5)claims in his essay, “Eponym as Placebo,” thatthere are too many facts for any one mind tohave more than a few in stock,” and thateponyms reduce information to manageableproportions. An eponym refers to the personafter whom some event or achievement isnamed, while placebo is an inactive agent usedto distinguish the objective effect of an activeagent, like an experimental treatment of somekind, from the subjective effect it produces. Tosay that eponym is a placebo is to say thatindividual names associated with greatachievements produce a sense of understand-ing, just as a placebo produces a sense of wellbeing. However, a sense of understanding isnot necessarily real understanding. Historywould be more complex, and certainly morevalid, if written without eponyms. Non-eponymic history, Boring claims, would revealthe impersonal, collective currents culminat-ing in great events.

The symbolic power of oneness, manifest-ed in the winner, hero, or celebrity, is synony-mous with the power of the eponym.Eponym’s intended function, however, is notto produce knowledge—not even partialknowledge; it is to recast history and affirmideals by reducing complex historical eventsinvolving thousands of actors into the actionsof one. In this sense, Rosa Parks can be cele-brated as the “mother” of a moral movement.But few serious historians hang the past oneponymic hooks. “The founding mother” is nohistorical statement but a commemorative,i.e., heuristic, device enabling posterity tomake sense of historical experience. By rank-ing actors according to symbolic relevance,then forcing the least of them to the margins ofconsciousness, the commemorative processmakes history more memorable. To give cred-it to all who deserve it, on the other hand,would make history less meaningful andreduce the clarity of the ideal they would rep-resent.

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Documents

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