Rosa Parks 1913-2005

Rosa Parks, as you surely know by now, has died.

For many years, a myth has developed around this woman, whose simple action of refusing to cede her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus spoke truth to racist power. That myth has said that she was a sort of milquetoast.

In part, that was the image which she and the local NAACP, which had carefully chosen her to be the person to overtly challenge institutionalized racism on the bus lines, wanted to portray. Here, her presence and persona indicated, was a simple, unassuming seamstress tired of being treated unjustly. Only a sympathetic figure could effectively challenge the law which told blacks to go to the backs of buses and to give their seats to whites. A fire-breather wouldn't do.

As the New York Times obituary for her says today:

Her act of civil disobedience, what seems a simple gesture of defiance so many years later, was in fact a dangerous, even reckless move in 1950's Alabama. In refusing to move, she risked legal sanction and perhaps even physical harm, but she also set into motion something far beyond the control of the city authorities. Mrs. Parks clarified for people far beyond Montgomery the cruelty and humiliation inherent in the laws and customs of segregation.

Like Jackie Robinson, who broke the color line in Major League Baseball, Parks needed to show restraint and dignity in the face of racial debasement. The aspirations of an entire race and whether they appreaciated it or not, all Americans, rested on her shoulders.

Because she played her role so well, people overlook the steel, the resilience, the righteous indignation, and the commitment that necessarily underlay her willingness to undergo the ordeal she endured.

Minority Americans will, of course, understand immediately the debt they owe to Rosa Parks. By sitting down on that Montgomery bus, she opened up doors of opportunity which, by the grace of God, will only be widened in future years.

White Americans owe her a debt as well: She called us to the tough but rewarding will of God, that we love God completely and love our neighbors as ourselves. She called us to begin to purge our souls of the sin of racism.

But the fact is that all Americans owe her a debt; she beckoned us to fulfill the promise of our national charter, the Declaration of Independence, when it stated simply that all are created equal.

[By the way, the designation of persons as milquetoasts is usually applied to the wrong people in our world. The real milquetoasts are members of the go-along gang, the conformists who never stand up--or sit down--for what's right. See here, here, and here.]

UPDATE: LaShawn Barber has an exhaustive listing of links to other bloggers' reflections on Rosa Parks' legacy along with her own thoughts.