The Tale of the Little Prince — Never Kid a Kidder ( Part 1 )

The University of Harvard rightly boats that it is one of the most respected educational establishments in the world, and in particular it boasts a business school whose name is synonymous with the smartest business brains in the world. You can be reasonably sure that there are no flies on a Harvard man—- or woman.

Established in 1636, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher education in the United States and boasts over 360,000 Alumi around the world. Despite being the very epitome of the American ideal, Harvard was always open to accepting students from foreign lands and from backgrounds which were entirely foreign to the great and the good of American society.

So it came to pass that in 1923 Harvard opened its doors to  Prince Michael Alexandrovich Dmitry Obelensky, a young refugee from the Bolshevik Revolution. Prince Michael Alexandrovitch had applied to enter Harvard and was rapturously received by no less a personage than the president of the University as if the Prince were conferring a great honour on this most ancient of American universities by honouring the campus with his very presence alone. The Prince was a student of engineering, enrolled in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and for two full terms he held court at the University with his easy wit and charm. He played chess and backgammon for the University team, was clearly bright and intelligent, and was widely popular!

However, rubber cheques, it turned out, were not acceptable currency in and around Harvard and when his bank account turned out to be as fictitious as his title, a greatly embarrassed president swiftly awarded Prince Michael Alexandrovitch the order of the boot and spectacularly sent him on his way.

You see Prince Michael the phoney had persuaded the authorities that the educational certificates he had earned during his youth in Russia had not survived the Revolution.Further investigation showed that he had spent some time in London before arriving in New York, and Scotland Yard records showed that in London he had succeeded in running up a series of convictions for larceny and fraud. In fact he had only been spared prison by agreeing to be deported to Guatemala!

However, he ended up in America but was deported to France after the Harvard affair, and even in Paris he succeeded in getting into some trouble eventually spending a period in prison for vagrancy among other things– an ignominious end and fall from grace for a once “respected Russian aristocrat”.

Except that Prince Michael was of course no aristocrat at all — and there was no prospect whatsoever that deportation from the United States,ignominy and a spell in a Paris jail were ever going to keep him down.

Our Prince was born altogether far more modestly as Herschel Geguzin, and had begun life as the son of a dried-goods merchant who owned a shop in Vilnius, Lithuania – then part of the Russian empire and subject to intermittent pogroms that made life difficult and dangerous for its Jewish inhabitants. Geguzin’s father had died before he was born, and, coming to the United States alone at the age of 10, the future Prince had passed most of what was left of his childhood being shunted from children’s asylums to one reform school after another in the poorer districts of New York, earning the title of  “celebrated bad boy” of no less than six New York orphan homes to which he was committed.For the remainder of his childhood, Geguzin – now known by the crudely Anglicised name of Harry Gerguson – spent working, rather in the style of Anne of Green Gables, as an orphan farmhand in Illinois.

After the deportation and the time in Paris, it is astonishing that “Prince Michael” was able to return to America – but return he did.

What made this all the more remarkable was that he was instantly recognisable standing at barely 5ft tall, and that he returned with an absolute belter of a disguise this time posing as……. Prince Michael Alexandrovitch Dmitry Obolensky Romanoff the last of the Romanov princes — yet at the same time he claimed to be a Jewish boy from New York who just happened to have a slightly English accent!

By 1936 The little Prince was once again facing extradition as he could not prove that had ever obtained any right to enter America in the first place, and once again his various schemes for loans and whatever had fallen foul of the law. Accordingly, he quickly borrowed a car and headed west popping up successively in Wichita, St Louis, Chicago and Kansas City. In these cities he would introduce himself as the Russian prince and con his way into staying in some of the swankiest apartments and homes in town. He enjoyed a fairly successful social season in Newport, where the evidence suggests that he contrived to attend a ball given by the Vanderbilts. Throughout this period, he lived on “loans” fraudulently obtained on the basis of false promises of repayment, and by persuading sundry art dealers to let him have works of art that he convinced them he could sell, on commission, in the Russian colonies. It is even suggested that he succeeded in borrowing some money by “pledging” the Russian Crown jewels!  In short, the Prince became a confidence man, and a pretty good one, too.

Eventually he arrived in what was so obviously a natural home for such a character– Hollywood California, and by this time his transformation into the Russian Prince was complete– in fact so complete that it was scarcely credible with everyone knowing that he was a complete and utter fraud — pretending expertly not to be a fraud.

Originally he was paid to work at the Clover Club casino, where he was hired to simply appear each night with his air of mystery and amazing stories. His mystique attracted crowds who spent heavily, though the casino owners knew at the same time that occasionally he would win big at the tables.

In due course, with the financial assistance of some famous backers, he struck out for himself and opened Romanoff’s restaurant becoming the most celebrated restaurateur in Hollywood with all the stars, and the great and the good queuing up for a table.

By this time, he habitually smoked cigarettes monogrammed with the imperial Russian ‘R’; and told stories about being schooled at Eton, at Harrow and at Winchester, attending not only Oxford and Harvard, but also the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, Cambridge, Yale, Princeton, the Sorbonne and Heidelberg. This might have been only a little remarkable for a man who – at least according to his own account – had driven a taxi for the French army during the defence of Paris and then fought on the Western Front as a British lieutenant, and on the Eastern Front as a Cossack colonel; who “knew the Sudan like the back of my hand”; who had won the Legion D’Honeur for some act of unspecified gallantry, and had gone on to defend the Winter Palace against rampaging Bolsheviks; had served six years in solitary confinement for killing a German nobleman in a duel; and who was able to produce at least some proof that he enjoyed a close, if oddly hazy, relationship with the former ruling dynasty of Russia.

 

Variously he also claimed to have killed Rasputin, had been given the titles Count Gladstone and Comte de Rochemonde, had been a spy under the name Captain Shaughnessy and was a relation of the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers.

What was most amazing, however, was that such an existence was a truly startling achievement for a man who had actually done none of those things, was none of those things, who knew none of those people— and who was, in reality, no sort of aristocrat, soldier or spy at all– with everyone knowing it.

His ridiculous fame became such that he regularly appeared on TV games shows and when he was meant to be a mystery guest on one show, it was decided that his peculiar accent was so recognisable he was asked to communicate with the panellists by  simply blowing a whistle!

As the years passed and the fame grew there was no letting up on the professionalism of his con artistry. He became close friends with the likes of Humphrey Bogart and David Niven, married a beautiful woman many years his junior and gained a level of respectability and celebrity whilst all the time maintaining his great act or con.

He would meet and greet members of the English establishment and regale them with tales of their own family and playing cricket in little known village cricket fields of their acquaintance. He spoke to them in such detail about the family history, local surroundings and villages that they were convinced he was actually telling the truth about being there and knowing their family. Quite how he achieved such knowledge and detail was never disclosed.

Romanoff’s restaurant was recognised as the best in Hollywood, and he lived out his days and nights there in opulent grandeur disposing the favoured seating arrangements of the stars, according to his own personal liking for them, despatching the disliked to the corners of a back room which he would occasionally deign to visit to refold an untidy napkin and see that its crest, of the double-headed eagle, appeared on top.

The Prince may have been a phoney-baloney, but it’s hard to fake genuine good taste and Romanoff had it in spades. The French cuisine he developed was the finest in the city, and drew all the local gourmands, who tolerated his insults and his habit of having his bulldogs dine with him at his table. They happily paid his high prices, but were treated to high quality food. He ran a constantly packed house full of people who were only referred to in town by just a single name:  Zanuck, Mayer, Cohn, Gable, Cooper, Sinatra,— all soon became regulars, along with an endless roster of famous faces.

If you were lucky enough to get a table– even one at the back of the house– when walking to the table with the maitre’d you may have to pass Lana Turner, Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, Sir Cedric Hardwick, Clifton Webb, Robert Morley, Cole Porter, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and Otto Preminger on the way.

The little Prince became known for his trademark spats, moustache and walking stick, and an impeccable (albeit faux) Oxford accent all of which helped to charm his way into Tinseltown society, and became much sought after for fancy soirées and polo matches. When Hollywood film-makers needed a technical adviser for a movie set in Europe, Romanoff claimed to be an expert on everywhere and everyone who had ever lived anywhere you could think of, and drew a comfortable salary for advising on “authenticity” of all things European. Yet everyone knew that was all bullshit and everyone was in on the gag. Most of the locals were self-invented, although perhaps not on quite such a grand scale–so they let him get away with it because they loved keeping company with a man of such bottomless chutzpah.

In the Restaurant he insisted that everyone should wear a tie much to the disgust of Humphrey Bogart who preferred to go open necked. During the filming of the Maltese Falcon, Bogart and fellow Star Peter Lorre came into the restaurant  wearing giant bow ties in mock protest.

The restaurant was also the seen of one of the most famous photographs in Hollywood when in 1957 a photographer snapped Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield at a table with Loren gazing surreptitiously at Mansefield’s ample bosom which is barely covered by her chosen dress.

Such events did nothing to harm the reputation of the Little Prince who by this time held sway in his own fantasy court.

However, perhaps the greatest evidence of the transformation of the boy from Vilnius into a widely accepted phoney prince came with the strange tale of a Lieutenant Commander Bernstein who was cutting a dash as an officer and hero in the casinos and clubs in Southern California. One night the Lieutenant Commander was regaling the company with his tales of heroism in the South Pacific when the Little Prince, who was listening, suddenly declared that he had an announcement to make.

The company looked round, and the diminutive dapper man brought himself up to his full height, pointed at the Lieutenant Commander and said ” He– is a phoney!”

The crowd were stunned and over the protest of the angry officer someone asked the well known restauranter  ” How do you know that?”.

Prince Michael Alexandrovich Dmitry Obelensky Romanoff sometime son of Czar Nicholas III, graduate from half the universities of Europe, treasurer of the Russian Crown Jewels, Killer of Rasputin, Cossack Officer, and true child of a long deceased shop owner from Vilnius, simply stared back and diffidently announced to one and all: ” Well, I know a little bit about phonies — and this man sometimes forgets to limp! Besides– his cheques bounce! He is a phoney and a fraud!”

A few days later Bernstein was arrested by the FBI and charged with impersonating a Naval Officer and for illegally passing cheques!

He had been trumped — by the little Prince!

All of which goes to prove– Never kid a kidder!

 

Big Nick, Rosa Parks, Vivian Malone Jones —- and yes, yet another man called—- Wallace!

One rainy day in 1943, whilst the worst of The Second World War was raging in Europe, a 30 year old black woman boarded a bus in Montgomery Alabama in the Southern United States of America. She proffered her money for her ticket and the driver– one James Fred Blake — who saw action as a member of the army in that same war—- handed her the requested ticket.

However, before the young woman was allowed to take her seat, Bus Driver Blake ordered her off the bus stating that whilst she had a ticket to ride, she had entered the bus by the wrong door. Basically, our young woman was black and she had boarded the bus by way of the “White’s only” door,

Not wishing to create a fuss, the young woman got off the bus– once again using the “White’s only” door — and walked the few yards towards the entrance reserved for ” Coloured’s or Black” people at the rear of the vehicle. As she walked towards the door at the back of the bus– still clutching her ticket — Bus Driver Blake closed the doors and drove off leaving his potential passenger standing in the evening rain.

Twelve years later, on the 1st of December 1955, Bus Driver Blake was once again at the wheel of his bus, when lo and behold the once 30 year old woman he had left standing in the rain boarded his bus again. This time she had entered through the correct door, had bought her ticket and had sat down on the bus and Mr Blake carried on with his driving without further ado.

Little did he know, that the small petite woman had remembered who he was and how he had left her standing in the rain all those years before, and little did he know that within the next few short minutes he would become embroiled in a situation that would lead to his passenger becoming famous in American folklore and being seen as a beacon for human rights- not just in America but throughout the world.

As the bus filled up, Mr Blake would attempt to enforce a local law which had stood since 1900, by making the black or coloured passengers move to the back of the bus so that the “White folks” could take a seat at the front.

However, on this December day in 1955, this one small black woman– a seamstress from a local department store– simply refused to move even when she was threatened with the police and potential arrest, with the result that Blake had to call on the forces of the Law to have her removed and ultimately charged.

When the police arrived they quickly established that the name of the woman concerned was Rosa McAuley Parks.

She was charged with a violation of Chapter 6, Section 11 of the segregation law of the Montgomery City code and as she was being lead away she asked the policeman ” why do you push us around so?” only for the policeman to reply  “I don’t know, but the law’s the law, and you’re under arrest.”

The story of Rosa Parks is well known, however it is often misunderstood in relation to its significance in ending segregation in the Southern United States and in the State of Alabama in particular.

Other black women had been arrested for refusing to move along on buses long before Rosa Parks, yet the practice and the law had continued just as before.

However, in the case of Rosa Parks the difference was that she herself was seen as an outstanding citizen who was respected by black and white alike, was a dedicated civil rights campaigner, and someone who after 20 years or more campaigning on behalf of blacks had decided on that December day that enough was enough. On that day and on that bus she took the view that she was confident enough to take the State of Alabama and the City of Montgomery in particular to the highest court in the land. She later said, “I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind…”.

In short, she- with the help of others- decided to move from a stance of organised protest on the streets to the stage of the most formal of protests in the most formal of institutions in America — The courts. She was in complete agreement with her arresting policeman– the law was indeed the law, and it should be on her side.

By the time Rosa came to trial, The entire black community in Montgomery had decided to boycott the bus company and for well over a year black people would walk to work, cycle to work, take communal taxis or what have you rather than take a bus. The bus company in turn lost a fortune with many of their vehicles ultimately sitting idle.

The Boycott had been announced from Church Pulpits throughout Montgomery on Sunday 4th December and within a few days of Rosa’s arrest some 35,000 leaflets had been distributed protesting at her treatment, calling for a boycott, and demanding a change in the law.

Mr Blake, the City of Montgomery and its “Jim Crow” law had picked on the wrong woman!

Her trial (on 15th December)  lasted only half an hour and she was ultimately fined the outrageous sum of $10 ( her fare had been 10 cents ) and was ordered to pay $4 in costs.

Rosa Parks immediately appealed and the bus boycott  was extended for the duration of the proceedings.

However, there was genuine fear in the black community that Rosa’s appeal would be deliberately delayed and impeded within the court system, and so a civil challenge to the offending law was raised on behalf of a number of other black women who had previously been charged with similar bus offences.

Accordingly on February 1, 1956, Fred Gray (attorney for the Montgomery Improvement Association) filed a lawsuit in the US District Court of Montgomery on behalf of another  five black women  who had all been the victims of discrimination on local buses. W.A. Gayle, the Mayor of Montgomery, was the defendant.

Among the plaintiffs was one Aurelia Browder who had been arrested on April 19, 1955, 7 months before the arrest of Rosa Parks, for sitting in the white section of a public city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was convicted and fined for her alleged crime. The other plaintiffs were Susie McDonald, Jeanette Reese, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith.

On June 5 1956, the judges released their decision in the landmark case of Browder v Gayle and determined that segregated buses violated the equal protection and due process guarantees of the 14th Amendment and were therefore unconstitutional. The City of Montgomery could not enforce any law “which may require plaintiffs or any other Negroes similarly situated to submit to segregation in the use of bus transportation facilities in the City of Montgomery.” Both the city and the state appealed this decision and on December 17, 1956, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously upheld the ruling, issuing a court order to the state of Alabama to desegregate its buses there and then. The Montgomery bus boycott ended on December 21, after 381 days.

Rosa Parks, Aurelia Browder and others had won.

However, the significance of the victory was not heeded by the State of Alabama, and in many respects remains misunderstood by subsequent civil rights protesters in that it was not Rosa Park’s refusal to give up her seat that had brought down the state, but rather the determination to force the state to fall within, recognise and abide by not only the law but the full force of the constitution of the United States of America that had always offered US citizens of every colour the appropriate legal protection.

If the City of Montgomery and the State of Alabama received a legal kicking in the cases of Rosa Parks and Aurelia Browder, that was to be nothing when compared with the upheaval caused by a young black woman called Vivian Juanita Malone Jones and a young black man by the name of James Hood.

After two years of deliberation and court proceedings, Malone and Hood were granted permission to enrol in the University of Alabama by order of District Court Judge Harlan Grooms in 1963. The district court had ruled that the University of Alabama’s practice of denying African-American students admission into their university was a violation of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case in which the act of educating black children in schools separate from white students was charged as unconstitutional.

The court cases for Malone and Hood had been brought by arrangement through  The NAACP ( National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People ) Legal Defence and Educational Fund of Alabama, and standing in their way (literally) was the Democratic Governor of the State– Governor George Wallace.

Having ruled in favour of Malone and Hood, Judge Grooms had also forbidden Governor Wallace from interfering with the students’ registration at the University of Alabama as the Governor had openly proclaimed that he would “stand in the schoolhouse door” to prevent black children from registering at the University.

It was at this stage that the world got to see one of the most remarkable events in the history of the United States of America.

Picture the scene: It is the 11th of June 1963 and a huge crowd gathers at the entrance to the Foster Auditorium on the University of Alabama Campus. The temperature is well above 100 degrees and the heat is oppressive. The campus is swarming with not only students, but hundreds of press men, members of the Alabama State Guard, and all sorts of members of the public when a most unlikely figure appears accompanied by two US Marshalls.

The figure concerned is the gentle giant hulk of Nicholas de Belleville Katzenbach, Deputy District Attorney of the United States of America who stood all of 6ft 5 inches tall.

Katzenbach is the epitomy of a legal G Man. His parents were Edward L. Katzenbach, who served as Attorney General of New Jersey, and Marie Hilson Katzenbach, who was the first female president of the New Jersey State Board of Education. His uncle, Frank S. Katzenbach, served as mayor of Trenton and as a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. Big Nick was the stereotype square man in a square hole, a man destined to be a Government legal officer from birth— or so it seemed — and he was there in Alabama with the full power and might of The President of the United States at his back.

As Katzenbach heads towards the entrance of the Foster Auditorium, while the two black students remain in a car guarded by yet more US Marshalls, he is met at the schoolhouse door by the much shorter, barrel chested and jutting chin figure of Governor Wallace — just as the Governor had promised.

The giant law man starts to publicly inform the Governor, in the nicest and most mild mannered way possible, that he is there to uphold the law and ensure that Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood are registered at the University, and he politely asks The Governor to step aside.

However, before he gets too far, big Nick is interrupted by Governor Wallace who proceeds to read a long speech which essentially tells the Deputy District Attorney and President Kennedy to get lost and makes it quite clear that court order or no court order, The Governor, with the assistance of the State Guard, will forcibly prevent Malone Jones and Hood from entering the building and completing their registration.

The crowd, the press and the Deputy District Attorney– who has to continually wipe himself down with a hanky due to the heat– are forced to look on in astonishment.

When the Governor finishes his speech, Katzenbach repeats his plea to the Governor but ultimately is simply forced to go back to his car.

Yet within a short time, with the press and the crowd still present, the giant Law man returns and this time he is accompanied by General Henry Graham of the Alabama State Guard. In the intervening period, Katzenbach had called President John F. Kennedy, and asked him to federalize the Alabama State Guard thus taking away the Governor’s position as commander in chief of the guard and now placing the general under the direct command of Kennedy himself. At this stage, General Graham approached the auditorium and commands Governor Wallace to step aside, saying, “Sir, it is my sad duty to ask you to step aside under the orders of the President of the United States.”

Wallace then protested further for a short period, but eventually moved, and Katzenbach proceeds to ensure that Malone Jones and Hood are registered as students.

Within a few months, Kennedy would be shot dead in Dealey Plaza, and Lyndon Baines Johnson would assume the Presidency. Katzenbach would go on to become not only the District Attorney of the United States but also the Undersecretary of State. The Big man would cause some controversy in relation to the Kennedy Assassination when he wrote that in his opinion “Unfortunately the facts on Oswald seem about too pat—too obvious (Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.)…….” and it was then said that he was one of the chief architects behind the Warren Commission findings and the possible cover up of the true events surrounding the Kennedy Assassination.

He would later leave Government Office and would take up various positions in private practice and industry, however his sphere of influence in later years can be seen by the fact that in 1980, Katzenbach testified in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in the defence of W. Mark Felt, who was later revealed to be the “Deep Throat” of the Watergate scandal and later Deputy Director of the FBI; Felt was accused and later found guilty of ordering illegal wiretaps on American citizens.

In December 1996, Katzenbach was one of New Jersey’s fifteen members of the Electoral College, who cast their votes for the Clinton/Gore ticket and later he also testified on behalf of President Clinton on December 8, 1998, before the House Judiciary Committee hearing which was considering whether or not to impeach President Clinton.

However the most amazing thing about the incident at the schoolhouse door was that it brought Governor George Wallace to the attention of the greater American public for the first time.

You would think that Wallace’s repeated public calls for segregation and his stance at the door would have made him hugely unpopular– however that is not the case,

Wallace later revealed that part of his stance on segregation was based on the not unreasonable belief that if he had not taken the stance that he did then there would have likely been all sorts of civil unrest at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan and that he did what he did to keep the peace. When you listen to what he actually said in his parting speech at the schoolhouse door there is much to support that contention.

He later publicly regretted the stance at the Schoolhouse door saying “I stood there and kept peace, but it still was a bad public relations posture and I’m sorry I did it that way.”

Wallace briefly ran for president in 1964, and when he couldn’t legally run for Governor again, his wife ran instead and was elected.

In 1968, he was back on the presidential campaign trail. Wallace was no longer a Democrat by this time, and instead stood as the leader of the American Independent Party. He pledged, if elected, to put troops on the streets of Washington, if needed to make the city safe.

“This is not race I’m talking about. Every time I mention this they say this has racial overtones,” Wallace commented. “When does it come to have racial overtones in this country to stand for law and order?”

The man who couldn’t change history in 1963 did change history in 1968 by winning the presidential votes of more than 9 million people. That support came mostly at the expense of Democrat Hubert Humphrey and Humphrey ultimately ended up half a million votes behind the Republican winner, Richard Nixon. Without Wallace, Humphrey would likely have won and Nixon would have been defeated.

Wallace began another presidential run in 1972, however that campaign ended when Arthur Bremer cut him down with five pistol shots in a Maryland car park after a campaign rally.

The former Governor won the 1972 Michigan Democratic primary while fighting for his life in a hospital. He made a triumphal appearance two months later at the Democratic National Convention, which nominated George McGovern, and in the process was proclaimed a hero.

He would never walk again or make a serious bid for the presidency, but his political career was far from over.

He continued to win elections for Governor and gained the support of many black voters and politicians for whom he’d once been a symbol of hate.

Finally, in 1986, Wallace acknowledged he was too old and sick to continue.

“I bid you a fond and affectionate farewell,” he said.

At the end of his career, many people were sorry to see him go.

Wallace was a Democrat at a time when virtually every Southern politician was a Democrat; a segregationist at a time when, he believed, most white Southerners were as well. He was a lifelong populist who said he wanted to be remembered as the education governor.

Wallace lived to see a Republican succeed him in the Alabama statehouse and to see his son, George Wallace Jr., continue the family political tradition.

His physical condition deteriorated and Parkinson’s disease added to the pain from the 1972 shooting.

When asked how he wanted to be remembered he stated “I did the best I could for the state of Alabama and the United States,” and of his stand at the schoolhouse door he commented “It shouldn’t have happened, and the state of Alabama is better now as a result of the integration of its schools.”

Despite earning high academic achievements from the University of Alabama, and becoming the first ever Black Graduate, Vivian Malone Jones never received a job offer in Alabama. She later joined the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington D.C. and served as a research analyst. While in Washington, she attended George Washington University, pursued a Master’s Degree in Public Administration and earned a job as an employee relations specialist for the Veteran’s Administration central office.

She took a position as the Executive Director of the Voter Education Project and worked towards voter equality for minorities, thus assisting millions of African-Americans to register to vote. She then became the Director of Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and Director of Environmental Justice for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a position she held until her retirement in 1996.

In October 1996, Jones was chosen by the George Wallace Family Foundation to be the first ever recipient of its Lurleen B. Wallace Award of Courage. At the awards ceremony, Former Governor Wallace, who had never met Jones despite the events of 1963 said, “Vivian Malone Jones was at the centre of the fight over states’ rights and conducted herself with grace, strength and, above all, courage.”

In 2000, the University of Alabama bestowed on her a doctorate of humane letters.

Rosa Parks eventually had to leave Alabama and so she and her husband migrated north to Detroit like many other Southern Black Americans.

Parks’ act of defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon, president of the local chapter of the NAACP; and Martin Luther King, Jr.,then a new minister in town who gained national prominence in the civil rights movement.

In Detroit, she found similar work and from 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to John Conyers, an African-American U.S. Representative. After retirement, she wrote her autobiography, and lived a largely private life. In her final years, she suffered from dementia.

Parks received national recognition, including the NAACP’s 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman and second non-U.S. government official to lie in honour at the Capitol Rotunda.

Her birthday, February 4, and the day she was arrested, December 1, have both become Rosa Parks Day,  and are commemorated in the U.S. states of California and Ohio.

Bus driver James Fred Blake drove the Montgomery City Bus until his retirement in 1974 and never had to look for another job. He said of Rosa Parks ” I was only doing my job. I had my orders.”

However, perhaps the greatest achievement brought about by a combination of events surrounding Rosa Parks, Vivian Malone Jones and Governor George Wallace comes about by way of a seldom told story:

In 1994 the Ku Klux Klan applied to sponsor a portion of United States Interstate 55 in St. Louis County and Jefferson County, near St. Louis Missouri. The sponsorship effectively meant that the Klan were paying for the highway to be cleaned up. In return for the sponsorship, the organisation would be entitled to erect signs which stated that the said portion of the Highway was maintained and looked after by the Ku Klux Klan.

Since the state could not legally refuse the KKK’s sponsorship of the Highway, the Missouri legislature decided to act and voted to give a name the section of highway concerned.

And that is how it came to pass that the Ku Klux Klan became responsible for maintaining the “Rosa Parks Highway” !

P.S.

If you are in any way interested in watching the entire stance at the schoolhouse door confrontation between Governor George Wallace and big gentle Nicholas Katzenbach you can see the entire extraordinary incident here:

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/47362544#47362544