"I Remember Rosa": article draft by Roosevelt Fitzgerald

I REMEMBER ROSA BY ROOSEVELT FITZGERALD
"Y'all better go to the toilet before we leave here." My mother would always say that to us children each and every time we were going to go anywhere in my hometown. We were further instructed not to drink anything for a couple hours or so before we were to leave. I remember when I was just a child there were times when I was really thirsty, you know how kids are, but I had to abstain from quenching my thirst because once we turned the corner off Pine Street to Franklin Street, there were no more restrooms that we could use.
When the need to urinate is not imminent it always seem so distant. It is difficult to recall the panic one feels when that organ needs to be wrung out. This is especially so because such a condition does not present itself on a daily basis. From time to time, as I recall, I would give in to my need and have a small drink of water. Every now and then my mother or one of my older brothers or my sister would catch me and they would really light into me. "Boy don't you know better than to drink water before we go downtown? When we get down there and you have to pee what are you going to do? We ain't going to come all the way back just so you can go to the toilet. You know them people don't let us use their toilets in them stores. What were you thinking about? We ought to leave your little behind at home."
You would have thought I had joined Al Capone's gang. No. I would've had to have been worse than that because nobody talked to Capone like that even when he killed people. Now that I think about it, Al was treated pretty good back in those days. We got treated worse than he did simply for having to pee or wanting to try on a pair of shoes or a hat or a coat or sitting down at the wrong place or going into the wrong place. We got treated really horribly and we didn't do anything nearly as bad as did any of those gansters. Perhaps that's the lesson we've learned] You remember seeing those signs that said; "CRIME DON"T PAY." It was true. They got comped.
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Anyway, it was because of such tongue lashings as that that I rarely gave in to my desires. One one occasion, that I'll tell you about, we were at a five and dime store. We had been downtown and window shopping for more than two hours. I wasn't much more than five years old and I needed to go to the restroom but I was afraid to tell anyone because they had told me "a thousand times" not to drink any water and I had gone ahead and had some. I didn't want them to have to come back home because, up to that point, nobody had bought me any little toy and, on top of that, they would all be upset and I would probably get a "good tearing up" for having had a drink of water.
Panic. I had the jitters like you wouldn't believe. I couldn't keep still. "What the matter with you boy? Do you need to pee pee?" "No ma'am." All the while my feet were moving as though I was standing on top of a wood burning stove that was blazing hot. My knees were moving like the shutters on the windows of a farmhouse in Kansas being pounded by the winds of a summer bluster or a wandering cyclone.
Over from where we were some rubber boots—the kind rich people once wore when they go fishing. I went over there and stood amongst them like I was playing. It was in one of those boots, with a red rim around the top, that I first learned how to spell relief and, no, it was not ROLAIDS. Wait. Do not laugh. This isn't funny? Perhaps one of the worse things that can happen to a person is to be forced to contribute to their own debasement.
I don't know if you can appreciate what goes on in the mind and soul of a person, especially a child, when they find themselves in such a predicament. Don't misunderstand, those of you who are young and uninitiated, there was a restroom in that store. They were all over the place. People like me, however, however young, could not use them. Many times, with many people, the need for relief was so great that even though they were grownups there
was not time to get back to the neighborhood and they had to seek other
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avenues. Alleyways and behind garbage cans and bushes became their sanctuaries. This, of course, contributed ammunition to our detractors who were quick to say; "that's why they cannot get anywhere. They don't have any home training."
Planning plays an important role in all our lives. I'm pretty good at planning things that I must do. Who wouldn't be? Anyone who grew up learning how to plan peeing surely can plan just about anything else.
That kind of treatment was dehumanizing and it repeated itself thousands of times and on millions of lives. We needed help and didn't really know where to go in search of it. We were mad as hell but we didn't know how to go about not taking it anymore.
Thanksgiving came and went as it always does and as usual for the following week the entire country belched and deal th with leftovers. Thanksgiving leftover demolition is a ritual which many people look forward to even though we always hear complaints. Its just ceremony. With others, every day is a day of leftovers; leftover rights, seats, dreams, ambitions, desires, treatment and all the rest.
Yes, Thanksgiving comes and goes and as soon as it goes we start to plan for the next event. We may not even be consciously aware of how our planning justaposes itself so closely from one event to the next but it happens all the time. No sooner than I wake up that I start thinking about when I m going to go back to sleep. When I swallow th final mouthful of lunch I start pondering on dinner. A moment after I leav to go I'm thinking about coming back. When I stand I think of sitting and vice versa. When I finish a task I'm thinking about starting the next. Well, you get the picture.
In 1955, shortly after Thanksgiving ended, our world thought that things would go on as usual. It was the Christmas season and all the decorations in the stores were up. Christmas lists had been made and in places like Natchez, Mississippi and Montgomery, Alabama and other places we generally refer to as down home, there had already been guests and visitors at some
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homes who had uttered the magic phrase; "Christmas give (gift).'"
The weather hadn't really turned cold during the last days of November and the first days of December. Some call it "Indian Summer." There was such an aura of normalcy. Everyone knew what to expect. Such a mental set did not make life any easier but at least it did cut down on surprises. Almost, anyway. On December 1, 1955 we got the surprise of our lives--nay, the surprise of all time. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery. She was arrested. Taken to jail. Fingerprinted. Mugshot. She was a young, beautiful, black woman who not only was "mad as hell" but she also was "not going to take it anymore."
Her act of heroism set in motion a series of events which would help put an end to the time when little black kids had to either go thirsty or urinate on themselves or find some other pot to pee in simply because they
were away from home.