Rosa Parks’ L.A. Friends Mourn

About a dozen years ago, prolific biographer Jim Haskins brought one of his most famous subjects, Rosa Parks, to dinner at the Los Angeles home of Gerry Branton.

Branton had known Parks for years, through her husband Leo, a prominent entertainment and civil rights lawyer. Like millions of others, she had long admired Parks’ courageous 1955 refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus, an act of civil disobedience that galvanized the modern civil rights movement.

Branton, too, was an African American refugee of the Jim Crow South, but the connections between the two women went well beyond that. Two weeks after that dinner, the long-widowed Parks began spending her winters poolside at the Brantons’ Lafayette Square home to escape the frigid Detroit winters.

“I knew her plight,” Branton said. “She hated the cold.”

For the next 10 years, as Halloween approached, Parks would move into a suite on the second floor of the Brantons’ spacious home in the stately Lafayette Square neighborhood near Crenshaw. Except for occasional out-of-town appearances, Parks wouldn’t decamp until spring. She would attend services at First AME and other churches, give talks and work on her projects for children.

As she and Branton would dine out around town -- anywhere from downtown to the Marina -- or eating Branton’s home-cooked gourmet cuisine, they would debate their differing responses to racism.

No matter what the offender’s insult, Branton recalled, Parks would never get angry or go on the attack, but would quietly stand her ground or make her point with her actions -- just as she did on that bus 50 years ago.

“I’d fight,” said Branton, who at 84 remains feisty, despite a stroke three years ago that has left her largely bedridden. “It’s stupid to fight. Rosa taught me how to take that. She was a good example.”

Branton and others throughout the city and the world Tuesday mourned the death of Parks, who died Monday at the age of 92. A few blocks away from the tranquillity of Parks’ adopted winter quarters, several African American leaders gathered in the early afternoon on a noisy overpass in Crenshaw, above a stretch of the Santa Monica Freeway named for the civil rights leader.

Najee Ali, of Project Islamic Hope, described Parks as a “person who made time for everyone.”

“She was a warm and compassionate individual who wanted to spend time with young people,” Ali recalled before the ceremony. “I figure it’s important that young people in this city and nation remember her sacrifice. She stood up for us by sitting down.”

“Rosa was a hero for a young woman like me,” said Sister Lita Herron, who spoke at the ceremony and cites Parks as one of her role models. Herron now spearheads Mothers on the March, an L.A. group of parents whose children have been murdered in South L.A.

Herron lamented that many young people today don’t appreciate Parks’ sacrifices. “If they had a clue, they wouldn’t be throwing away their lives,” she said. “We’ve stepped backwards since the civil rights movement. We’ve lost affirmative action in California. And more young men are filling our prison cells and cemeteries. I’d say that probably money has taken the place of God in our hearts.”

At the First AME Church in West Adams, elected and church officials joined local civil rights leaders to call on the public to pray for Parks and to recall her legacy of courage. Many of the leaders present, including former Los Angeles Urban League President John Mack and founding AME Bishop H.H. Brookins, recalled meeting and sharing time with Parks.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called Parks a “woman, though small in stature, who loomed large in the history of America.”

“I’m here because people like Rosa Parks had the courage to stand up to segregation,” Villaraigosa said.

Sheriff Lee Baca, wearing a suit instead of his department uniform, emphasized the role of law enforcement in preserving and defending civil and human rights. “When Rosa Parks sat down, justice stood up, America grew up.... Law enforcement stands on the side of civil rights and justice.”

“Rosa Parks lived in a day more simple than this day. The enemy -- racism -- was well-defined, clearly perceived,” said the Rev. Charles Blake. “Our enemies today are much less easily perceived, but no less destructive.... We must stand and fight just as Rosa Parks.”

Toni Scott, 59, stood near the Rosa Parks freeway sign, away from the wreath, holding framed photographs of her and Parks, taken during her visits to Los Angeles. A member of the AME gospel choir, Scott said whenever the group performed with Parks in the audience, her singing meant a bit more.

“You get a really warm feeling because I rode the back of the bus” in Norfolk, Va., she said.

“When she came, it was, ‘Yes, she did that for me,’ ” Scott added, smiling and holding up an appreciative fist in the air.

Branton, who grew up in Jackson, Tenn., recalls Parks once telling her how a waitress, who did not recognize Parks, had ignored her at a restaurant in Illinois about 10 years ago.

Parks didn’t say a word; she turned around and left. “She wouldn’t let it touch her,” Branton said.

“I would’ve called them a couple of names.”

Parks, who had become ill, didn’t make it to L.A. last winter. She and Branton would chat on the phone, but Branton could sense that “she was losing reality.

“I think Rosa just got tired of living.”