Notable Christmas Season Events (Dec 29, 2024 - Part 5)

by Scott Sosebee

This continues the Christmas Season series

This week, we will finish with our “snapshots” of historical events that occurred during the Christmas Holiday season.

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)

The Civil Rights Movement of the mid-twentieth century produced some of the most transformative and consequential images in American history. The horrible treatment of marchers in Birmingham, the hateful recriminations hurled at students walking to school in Little Rock, the mournful photos of the murdered voting rights workers during the “Summer of Freedom” in Mississippi, the desolate emotions of burned-out busses during the “Freedom Rides,” and the solemn determination of the African American students staging a sit-in in Greensboro, NC are all seared into the American consciousness. However, perhaps the most iconic image of the era may have been the simple but forceful bravery of Rosa Parks seated near the front of a Montgomery public bus in 1955. Parks’ symbolic defiance of Montgomery’s utterly despicable segregation policies on public transportation kicked off an almost year long African American boycott of the city’s bus transit system, a boycott that led to one of the most substantial victories for civil rights in the nation.

Montgomery’s African American activists had been organizing and protesting Montgomery’s civil segregation for years before Parks entered that bus. A group of Black women professionals had met with the city’s mayor, and members of the local chapter of the NAACP had spoken publicly and privately with transit officials, all in an attempt to reverse the practices, and all to no avail. Parks was one of those activists, and as an officer with the local NAACP Chapter, she agreed to become a sort of “scapegoat,” but for sure a symbol of their ambition when on December 1, by planned arrangement, she entered a downtown bus, sat in a front seat, and was then subsequently arrested when she refused to move when a group of Whites entered the bus. Parks knew she would be arrested. In fact, she and the NAACP were counting on it.

The NAACP began to mobilize Black organizations on December 2, and on December 3, representatives and citizens met at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in a meeting presided over by the Church’s young minister, Martin Luther King, Jr. The result was, starting on December 5, a boycott of Montgomery’s busses. Ridership on the city’s busses dropped dramatically, so much so that the system was in danger of becoming insolvent. Finally, on December 20, 1956, more than a year after it began, the Supreme Court issued a ruling holding a lower court order that such practices were unconstitutional. The city had to give in and the boycott ended. It was a signal that the struggle could achieve results.

Barney Clark Receives the First Artificial Heart (1982)

I think that often we forget that some of the most dramatic and far-reaching historical milestones come in the form of advancements in technology, and none may be more extraordinary than those in medical science. One of the most important of such advancements occurred on Dec. 2, 1982 when, in Salt Lake City Utah, 62-year-old Barney Clark became the first person to have an artificial heart transplanted into his body.

Clark was a dentist, a self-described “tough old guy” from Seattle. However, no amount of “toughness” could save Clark from the genetic and lifestyle ravages that his heart had undergone. Doctors for a decade had tried to treat Clark with the conventional treatments of the day, one of which involved injecting him with multiple doses of steroids each month. His heart, subsequently, got worse instead of better. One of his attending physicians said that his heart walls were now as thin as tissue paper and about as strong. Without something drastic happening, Clark would likely die before the year was out.

Dr. William DeVries at the University of Utah Medical Center was a pioneer in cardiothoracic surgery, and he was searching for an ideal candidate for what was called the Jarvik-7, named after its inventor, Robert Jarvik, MD. It was fully artificial heart, an aluminum and polyurethane device connected to a 400-pound air compressor. DeVries thought Clark was the perfect recipient. He approached Clark; the first time, Barney turned him down, but after discussing it with his family over Thanksgiving, he agreed to the procedure. He immediately traveled to Salt Lake City, and on December 2, 1982, Dr. DeVries, in a seven-hour operation, implanted the Jarvik-7.

The operation saved Clark’s life, but he unexpectedly died 112 days later, generally of other complications. However, his pioneer operation kickstarted the technology of artificial hearts—most of which today are used as temporary fixes before a biological transplant can be found—and the work of artificial parts, such as valves. Clark’s bravery to be used experimentally was a selfless gesture for all of humanity.

Hostage Terry Anderson Freed in Lebanon (1991)

During the bulk of the 1980s, the United States was involved in a number of military and diplomatic entanglements and even direct military actions in the volatile Middle East. Much of the tension in the United States stemmed from both direct disagreement with the nation of Iran over the U.S.’s support of that nation’s former leader Shah Reza Pahlavi, as well as continued American military assistance for Israel and its opposition to a homeland for Palestinian Arabs. One of the consequences of upheaval in the region was a civil war in Lebanon, a war that Terry Anderson, a journalist with the Associate Press, was covering in 1991. During that war, Hezbollah, an Arab nationalist group that was aligned with Iran and also one that the United States State Department had declared a terrorist organization began operations in Lebanon. Hezbollah, as part of their pressure campaign against the United States and other Western powers, had begun seizing American and European citizens in Lebanon and making them captives. Anderson, on March 16, 1985, was leaving a tennis court in West Beirut when he was seized by member of Hezbollah. They took him to secret compounds in the suburbs of Beirut, and moved him around to different jails and cells to confuse any rescue attempts.

The United States, as a policy, had refused to negotiate with any groups they had deemed terrorist organizations, which meant that Anderson languished in captivity for 2,454 days (almost 7 years). He was the longest-serving American captive, but by 1991, American relations with Iran—as well as Syria, the other major foreign influence in Lebanon—began to thaw, which led Iran to use their influence to have Anderson released on December 4, 1991.

I hope you have enjoyed these vignettes, and I hope you have had a very Merry Christmas and look forward to having a very Happy New Year! On to 2025!

The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.