Rosa Parks – 1913–2005

Her civil action changed the course of the Nation

Biography in video: https://www.biography.com/people/rosa-parks-9433715
Armelle Falliex’s Statement
Painting
About the painting by Beatrice Chassepot

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Armelle Falliex statement

“Rosa Parks was born February 4th, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Rose was her grandmother’s name who was the daughter of an Irish man and a black slave.
Her youth has been marked by the actions of the Ku Klux Klan, which among other burned twice the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls where she studied at the time.
She had to undergo everyday racism situations. In her autobiography, she details the situations such as fountains reserved either for whites or blacks. She tells about the school transportation prohibited for both Black and Yellow children, as well as buses and trains with sections strictly limited for whites and blacks. She realizes very quickly that there is a world for whites and a world for blacks.

In December 1932, she married Raymond Parks, a barber who was an activist for the cause of civil rights and a member of the Alabama Association for the Advancement of Colored People. After being couturier and caregiver, she became a member and the secretary of the movement for civil rights.

Rosa Parks became the figurehead of the fight against racial segregation in the United States by refusing December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus.

Arrested by the police on December 5, she was fined for $ 15 and appealed the ruling. Martin Luther King -a young unknown pastor at that time- with Ralph Abernathy have launched a campaign of protest and boycott against the bus company. That will last 381 days and will result in the repeal of segregationist laws in the bus, declaring them unconstitutional.
This painting is for me the symbol of Interracial Equality.”

 

About the painting by Beatrice Chassepot:

Of course the word “EQUALITY” is on the top of the whole painting as a statement. Then the painting is separated in two. The bus part, with more black color because it is the reason of the fight. And second, the dazzling smile of remarkable Rosa Parks. Here Falliex continues the fight with her means which is the paint. Pretend to look at the face without any knowledge of Rosa’s story, her face here could be either white or black and actually it is both -the black color here is the shadow- This a way for Falliex to show the successful result of Rosa’s fight; there is no white, there is no black here just the illuminated smile of a human being. BCh, Los Angeles, March 1st, 2015.