Charles Cook Podcast

We have literally been lied to about everything Matt Walsh “The Rosa Parks story you were taught in school was fake too. This was not just some woman on her way home from work. Civil rights leaders thought Parks would make a sympathetic face for their lawsuit and then told her, a longtime NAACP volunteer, to create a situation where she'd be arrested. This gets sold to the public as totally organic when actually it's playacting to create ideal conditions for a court case or scandal. The iconic photo of Parks on the bus was staged months after the incident as part of a press campaign. (The photo is shown in the clip) The white man, sitting behind her in the bus photo was a journalist, which you probably didn't know.” Let’s fact check this. It’s 100% true What Actually Happened on December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks was a longtime NAACP volunteer and secretary of the Montgomery chapter. She had been deeply involved in civil rights activism for years (including work on cases like the Recy Taylor rape and voter registration efforts). She was not just a random tired seamstress on her way home from work who spontaneously refused to move. Local civil rights leaders had been looking for a strong test case to challenge bus segregation. They even had people cast for the role before Rosa Parks. Earlier attempts include 15 year old Claudette Colvin were passed over because leaders felt Rosa Parks, a mature, respected, married woman with a spotless reputation, would be a more sympathetic plaintiff in court and to the public The Iconic Photo was 100% staged The famous photo was taken on December 21, 1956, this is over a year after her arrest and on the first day the buses were integrated after the Supreme Court ruling It was deliberately staged by journalists, Look Magazine and UPI, for a press campaign to dramatize the victory The white man sitting behind her is Nicholas Chriss, a UPI reporter, not a random angry passenger or segregationist