Was Rosa Parks A Communist?

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old black seamstress, refused to give up her seat on a crowded city bus. She was arrested and jailed.

A few days later Martin Luther King arrived in town to launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott. After 381 days, the Supreme Court ordered the city buses integrated.

This victory set in motion a campaign of protests, marches, strikes, boycotts and civil disobedience that destroyed Southern racial segregation forever.


That brave, spontaneous act made late Rosa Parks into American icon.

Unfortunately, like so much of contemporary history it is pure bunk.

It has been known for years that Parks was a highly trained activist and her action was a long planned provocation.

From US left wing journal The Nation

Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on that bus was an intentional attempt to change a nation. At a time when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was under attack in the segregated south, Parks was an elected official of her local NAACP branch from the 1940s on and an activist with Voters’ League, a pioneering voting rights group in Alabama.

Employed by Clifford and Virginia Durr, who were among the most outspoken white supporters of civil rights in the south, Parks was trained at the Highlander Folk School and acted as an informed and intentional activist.


It has been known for years that Parks, along with Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernethy and scores of other Civil Rights activists trained at the Communist Party run, Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.

Since her death in 2005, evidence has emerged that Parks not only carried out her act of civil disobedience under Communist guidance, but that she may have even been a covert Party member.

On October 25th 2005 someone posted this comment on leading US left wing blog, Daily Kos

Rosa Parks was a member of CPUSA.

I work for the PWW, the newspaper for the CPUSA, though I am not a member. I heard it from a national chair member that I work with. She may not have released that information widely, therefore it’s not the policy of the party to “out” her, nevertheless, it is true.

Interesting, but not proof.

More convincing evidence of Parks’ direct links with the CPUSA can be found in this article from the Peoples Weekly World of December 15th 2006 by Daniel Rubin, a member of the Education Commission of the CPUSA.

The article tells of a recent symposium on the life and work of leading US black Communist couple, James and Esther Jackson.


The symposium “James and Esther Jackson, the American Left and the Origins of the Modern Civil Rights Movement” at the Tamiment Library of New York University on Oct. 28 was an event of singular enlightenment and emotional impact. Three panels of academics and activists delivered papers illuminating the little-known lives of the Jacksons, their co-workers and the struggles in which they participated that helped shape developments in our country from the late 1930s to the present.

Some 250 students, historians, academics, colleagues and political leaders packed the library’s hall. Sam Webb, Communist Party USA national chair, and national board members and longtime friends of the Jacksons, Debbie Amis Bell and this writer, represented the CPUSA.

Michael Nash, Tamiment Library director, and others presented papers on the key role the Jacksons and other notables from the Young Communist League and CPUSA played in establishing and organizing the Youth Congress. The Youth Congress grew to 100,000 members throughout the South. They did voter registration and organized tobacco and other workers into unions.

The Youth Congress and other movements…were forerunners of the movement around the 1954 Supreme Court school desegregation decision, the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1956, and the civil rights revolution that began in 1960.

Rubin reveals what the symposium did not cover;

Aspects of the Jacksons’ lives mentioned only briefly or not at all included James Jackson’s role as CPUSA Southern Affairs secretary. At that time Jackson worked in close association with Rosa Parks, a relationship which had begun in the days of the Youth Congress and continued during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. As The Worker’s editor, Jackson worked with a number of the leaders of the civil rights revolution.

Interestingly, Rosa Parks spent from 1965 to 1988 working for CPUSA linked Michigan congressman, John Conyers. Conyers was a very close associate of Detroit mayor and covert CPUSA member, Coleman Young. According to Rubin;

Another interesting aspect was when Esther Jackson headed the Civil Rights Congress in Detroit and James Jackson was educational director of the party’s Ford autoworkers section, which had hundreds of members. The Jacksons forged a lifelong friendship with autoworker and several-term mayor of Detroit Coleman Young.

Like many “spontaneous” events of the last century, the US Civil Rights movement was planned, sparked, guided and controlled by the Communist movement.

Rosa Parks, brave and committed, though she undoubtedly was, was a pawn of the Party.

History books should acknowledge this fact.

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12 thoughts on “Was Rosa Parks A Communist?

  1. It’s funny you mention that Mah because I was about to post a comment asking Trev what he thought about communist/socialist hip hop acts. There are a few of them becoming reasonably popular amongst certain youth, such as the Coup, Immortal Technique and Dead Prez.

    Maybe young right libertarian people should start their own hip hop ACT (lol catch my pun). Ask David if he’s interested. “yo yo I work hard and earn my money honestly but the IRD take it and give it to some bitch on the DPB” (I sort of plagarised that from Craccum).

  2. It’s quite sad how the African-American community has been taken control by these black radical Marxists. These black radical Marxists are just like the terrible regime of Ethiopia such as the Derg and folks like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

    Heck, check out my blog, I profile some Marxist orientated hip-hop “artists” designed to radicalize the African-American community into Marxism and encourage criminalism of all horrible things. Heck, I’m planning to even go after DuBois for endorsing Imperial Japan since my family members died during the occupation. Since I myself am part Chinese as well as being Jewish.

    Simply pathetic to see totalitarian types in charge. The only black leaders that can be called leaders are Larry Elder and Bill Cosby. I’m probably sure there are other Larry Elders and Bill Cosbys in the African-American community. But it seems like the black radical Marxists are keeping their mouths shut.

  3. MAH The old fellow in the photo above is actually Dubois. Jackson signed him up for the CPUSA when he was in his 90s.

  4. I’m willing to bet my money that segments of the Civil Rights Movement were indeed controlled by the Communist movement. Heck, there’s even a photo of old Dr. King with the Communist Ghana dictator along with WEB DuBois who endorsed Imperial Japan to conquer non-Communist China which enabled Mao to rise to power after the nationalist Chinese government was weaken by the invasion of the Imperial Japanese.

  5. That’s the horrible thing about commies Cameron.

    Often their causes are just.

    The problem is that their solutions are usually worse than the original problem.

  6. Whatever political ideology Rosa Parks held she was a committed activist who took part in many causes that I think even right thinking ACT members would support. Unless that is they want to bring back segregated buses. Oh wait a minute none of them ride buses, they have SUVs ;p

  7. Right on clint. These turkeys used to swear black and blue that they weren’t commies.

    Now that their causes are more popular they want to take the credit-which means they have to tell the truth.

    They find bit of difficult, never having done it before.

  8. I don’t think Oliver gets it. Why didn’t these people ever mention their communist activity when they were committing these actions rather than hide them?

  9. Lighten up Oliver.

    It’s hardly my fault the commies target blacks, maoris, gays, women, children, the low paid, the disabled, or any other minority or “oppressed” group they can get some mileage from.

    If people get upset that I point out they are being manipulated by the Marxists, that’s their problem.

    They should be angry at the manipulators, not sweet li’l ol’ me.

  10. Jesus Christ, Loudon, your posts are getting increasingly more and more reactionary. Your tone toward American blacks is rather concerning: in this post, and in others, you have seemed to imply that blacks are haplessly led by Communists, Socialists and Democrats without having any of their own thoughts or ever committing any actions on their own accord.

    Sounds like sheer and utter racism to me.

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