I woke up yesterday morning to see ‘Rosa Parks’ trending on Twitter. When someone trends on Twitter these days, it is usually for one of four reasons: they’re dead (not possible in Parks’ case, since she passed away in 2005); they’ve been ‘cancelled’ (very very unlikely in Parks’ case); they’ve released new material: books, music, film etc. (again, not possible for Parks); or someone else has said something about them and sparked debate.
Indeed, Parks was trending as a result of this final category. Stephen Moore, an economic advisor to the White House, had suggested that those Americans protesting against the lockdown were ‘the modern day Rosa Parks’ because ‘they are protesting against injustice and a loss of liberties’.
Putting the context of the coronavirus aside (and trying to remain apolitical), I want to consider these remarks within the context of my project, considering the advent of the civil rights movement that Parks played such an influential role in and its global impact, particularly in the subsequent civil rights campaign in Northern Ireland.
Michael Farrell, one of the leaders of People’s Democracy, an organisation central to the Northern Irish civil rights movement, gave a speech at Queen’s University, Belfast in 2018 to commemorate 50 years since the first civil rights march in Northern Ireland in 1968. In this speech, he addressed the world in which Northern Ireland found itself in 2018 and sought to suggest a relationship, or lack thereof, between it and the world that fostered the civil rights movement. He suggested that the transnational movement of ideas from the US to Northern Ireland on civil rights brought a ‘strong current of anti-racism and international solidarity that permeated the movement [in Northern Ireland]. However, as he continues, ‘fifty years later, the situation is almost reversed. Today there is a growing threat from right wing populism, xenophobia, homophobia and downright racism that has been sweeping across Europe… while anti-immigrant hostility has been a leading factor in the pro-Brexit campaign in the UK’.
This reversal can also be seen as a transnational process and (irrespective of its origins) has been present in the US in recent years, and, through Moore’s hostile comments on the nature of the injustice fought by African Americans in their civil rights movement, it has been directly expressed and exposed. The fundamental difference between Parks and her ‘modern day contemporaries’ is that Parks was fighting for the liberties she and other African Americans had never had, and the injustice that had irreparably damaged and cost lives; these ‘modern day versions’ are fighting an ‘injustice’ designed to save them.
Perhaps back in 1968, if Twitter had existed, Rosa Parks might have been trending in Northern Ireland, but, by Michael Farrell’s word, it would have been for a very different reason to the ones that exist in today’s world.