70 years later: Rosa Parks’ bravery to be celebrated in Windsor

Lana Talbot holds a piece of an Underground Railroad quilt they are working on, inside Sandwich First Baptist Church in Windsor, Ont. (Michelle Maluske/CTV News Windsor)

The bravery of Rosa Parks is going to be celebrated in Windsor.

Assumption University is hosting an event on Feb. 4, featuring people who knew the ‘Mother of the civil rights movement.’

According to the U.S. National Archives, on Dec. 1, 1955, Parks refused to make room for white passengers on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

That simple act of defiance landed Parks under arrest, and Martin Luther King Jr. subsequently launched a boycott.

It would last for nearly a year, according to John Cappucci, president of Windsor’s Assumption University.

“That was a very bold action, and it was very inspiring action at the same time,” Cappucci said Friday. “Where someone stands up to injustice and bigotry is something very encouraging that we want to pass on to our youth.”

He is moderating a panel discussion called “Race, Religion and Resistance”.

Included in the panel will be some of the people who knew Parks personally, including her grand niece Erica Thedford who’s coming from Detroit.

“She’s going to share some of the more intimate details about her great aunt,” said Cappucci.

Also on the panel is Lana Talbot, an elder at Sandwich First Baptist Church in Windsor.

Talbot met Parks on numerous occasions, including a visit to the church in the early 1990’s.

“She was quiet yet forceful,” Talbot told CTV News Friday.

Parks was here as part of a school exchange, with youth from Detroit, to visit with their peers in Windsor.

Talbot said they staged a re-enactment of Parks bravery on the bus in Montgomery.

To this day, Talbot believes she can sometimes feel Parks’ peace inside their west-end church.

“The spark is still alive,” Talbot said. “Her tenacity to stand up and be counted and not be afraid any longer.”

Talbot plans to bring photographs from Parks’ visit to Windsor and share what it was like to befriend an icon at the event on February 4th.

“(Participants) will get who she really was; the hard work that she did do.” Talbot said. “Even though she was a soft-spoken woman, they’ll know the tenacity that lived inside her, that she did what she was supposed to do, no matter what anyone said.”

Event details

The panel discussion will start at seven o’clock on Feb. 4 – what would have been Parks’ 113th birthday.

Cappucci will moderate the discussion by Talbot and Thedford who will be joined by Shetina Jones and Michael Brown.

It is being held at the Caribbean Centre, 2410 Central Avenue in Windsor.

It is free of charge and registration is not required.