Ingram: Roy Moore raking in big bucks

MONTGOMERY — It was no secret that former Chief Justice Roy Moore was raking in big bucks on what is called the “Knife and Fork Circuit” as a public speaker. But nobody realized until last week how lucrative it has been.

As required by the Ethics Law, Moore filed a financial disclosure form with the Ethics Commission indicating his income in 2004 from speaking engagements and the sale of his book (So Help Me God) had generated more than $250,000 in income.

For the record, that is almost three times as much as he would make if he were to be elected governor. The salary of that office is $96,361 annually.

Bus Boycott

Without question the death of Rosa Parks in late October has had an impact on the observation of the 50th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, most especially the press coverage of this event both within and without the state.

So much coverage was given to the death of Mrs. Parks — the “Mother of the Bus Boycott” — that what might have been a huge story this week has diminished enormously.

Several newsmen from both the print and broadcast media from out of state contacted me in recent weeks and posed almost the identical question: What can we write or say about the bus boycott anniversary which we haven’t already written or said following the death of Mrs. Parks?

It was a good question which I could not answer.

Certainly there were a variety of programs and observations in Montgomery on Dec. 1, the date Mrs. Parks was arrested, but they received nothing like the wall-to-wall coverage given her death and funeral. There was no mention of the boycott anniversary on the MSNBC website on Dec. 1.

There was a sad sidebar to this historic event last week. Claudette Colvin, in an interview with USA Today, expressed some bitterness that her role in the bus boycott had been overlooked.

Ms. Colvin was arrested in March, 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus. This was nine months before Mrs. Parks was arrested.

At the time she was only 15, and police reports indicated that she resisted arrest and also shouted profanities at the arresting officers. Black leaders in Montgomery did not choose to use her arrest to launch the boycott.

Ms. Colvin in the interview expressed some resentment that she never got any recognition.

“Rosa got the recognition,” she said in the USA Today interview. “I didn’t even get any recognition. I was disappointed by that because maybe that would have opened some doors. After 381 days (the length of the boycott) I was not a part of things anymore. When I heard about stuff, it

was like somebody else, on TV.”

Ms. Colvin also had her own explanation of why Mrs. Parks was put in the forefront of the historic movement: “I believe they felt she would appeal to the adults and to middle class people because she was fair-skinned and I’m dark-skinned. If I was fair-skinned it would have been a different story. They would have used me.”

Belatedly, Ms. Colvin has received some recognition. She was one of a half-dozen people who played roles in the boycott who were honored at a reception in Montgomery last week.

Holmes’ headlines

I have said it before and will say it again: There is not a man on the political scene in Alabama who can play the press quite so well as state Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery.

Last week as the 50th anniversary of the bus boycott neared, Holmes issued a demand for an investigation of the 10 bombings of homes and churches in Montgomery which occurred during the boycott. Be sure Holmes got headlines and TV time all over the state.

Critics of the lawmaker — and he has his share — wondered out loud why Holmes was so concerned about crimes committed a half-century ago but had nothing to say about the record six homicides committed in Montgomery last week, all of them black on black.