Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Some accounts acknowledge this bit of strategy while emphasizing the fact
that Parks was secretary of the local NAACP and worked closely with its presi-
dent, E. D. Nixon. It was Nixon who had decided not to pursue the Colvin case.
These accounts suggest that Parks's resistance on December 1 was planned, as
Nixon and others felt that the time had come to challenge Jim Crow,
3
and that
Rosa Parks was a strong character who could withstand public scrutiny and
represent the Black community well. Such accounts laud Parks but diminish
her remarkable act of bravery. As a community activist, Parks was better pre-
pared than most to follow through with such an act. She must have realized the
likelihood of being arrested when she refused to give up her bus seat. Never-
theless, when the situation occurred - and it occurred spontaneously (Parks &
Haskins 1992) - she handled it with quick thinking, dignity, and courage.
Our account attempts both to extol Parks as an individual and to explicate
the power that had built up in the community through so many years of abuse,
organization, and resistance. Ours is a story not just of one brave individual,
but of many, who came to realize that by acting together they could change
their world. Thus the TOGI chorus include members of 1955 Montgomery's
Black and White communities, who are struggling with the issue of segregation.
These are the members of Chorus Present. There are also two other groups in
the TOGI chorus. Members of Chorus Past are Africans taken as slaves during
colonial times, who look to the 1955 events and wonder how they could ever
come to be.
4
Members of Chorus Future are young urban dwellers of today,
who look to the 1955 events and wonder whether anything has really changed.
Each choral category includes perspectives identified as “positive,” “neutral,” or
“negative” with respect to the bus boycott.
TOGI's characters include notable members of the Black and White com-
munities. The portrayals of Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin, E. D. Nixon, Martin
Luther King, Jr., Jo Ann Robinson (president of the Women's Political Coun-
cil), and Fred Gray (attorney for Rosa Parks and later, for the Montgomery Bus
Boycott), derive from autobiographies and other accounts of the boycott and
related events. Other characters are more fictionalized, though they also are
based on accounts of and by people in Montgomery at the time: Tacky Gayle
(mayor of Montgomery), Clantello Bagley (manager of the City Bus Lines), J. P.
Blake (the bus driver who had Rosa Parks arrested), and the arresting officers.
TOGI narrative structure
TOGI opens as the chorus members introduce themselves. Viewers can watch
this introduction or skip to the first scene of the story. The narrative proceeds
