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Tuesday, November 19, 2019

The Scene

Twitter loses it over 'historical flex' after Detroit native posts throwback photo with Rosa Parks

Posted By on Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 5:09 PM

click to enlarge Rosa Parks with young Cosey. - COURTESY OF CHANDLER COSEY
  • Courtesy of Chandler Cosey
  • Rosa Parks with young Cosey.

Well, it's time to add “historical flex” to your vocab arsenal because one West Side Detroit native just broke the internet with a single tweet.

Twitter erupted Tuesday after model and artist Chandler Cosey posted what appeared to be a super casual, totally unassuming throwback photo of himself as a baby, next to a recent photo of the 24-year-old, who now lives in Philadelphia.



“Lil Chan vs Big Chan” the caption reads. It didn't take long for Twitter to recognize the real star of the throwback photo, none other than literal Civil Rights icon Rosa friggin' Parks, who is seen in the yellowed photograph smiling and holding a wiggly and disinterested plaid suspender-wearing Lil Chan.


Twitter, naturally, was not going to let Cosey get away with such flexing.
 




Others point out that the photo highlights the fact that the Civil Rights Movement was not as long ago as we seem to remember.



Of course, the post brought out some low-key conspiracy theorists: Is it Photoshop or Chan's gran?



Some Twitter-users may want to peep Rosa's Wikipedia page before having a heart attack. (She died in 2005.)


Cosey says he is in awe at the response to his post, which has accumulated more than 6,000 reshares and 40,000 likes. 

“The photo was taken in August 1996 I was around one and a half years old,” Cosey shares with Metro Times via text. “The event was a civil rights activist dinner I believe and it was taken by Monica Morgan a photographer from Detroit.”

In 1955, Parks famously refused her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott and nationwide activism to end segregation. She later settled in Detroit with her husband and died at the age of 92 of natural causes. The restored Montgomery bus is housed at the Henry Ford Museum and Parks is buried in Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery.

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