Rosa Parks @ MindSay

This week at my son's school, his class is learning about Black history.  Why not for the whole month?  Because they were also celebrating the Olympics.  But they are doing it, and for that - especially for a room full of 3 year olds - I applaud them!  Each day they will learn about a significant figure in Black history and then participate in an activity that relates to that individual.  Cool.

So today?  They are learning about the late great Rosa Parks.  The activity?  Playing "The Wheels on the Bus".  So what Shiny and I want to know is - does the driver still say "Move on back?"

I'm a sucker for the small act of bravery. Nice - nice is easy. No wonder everyone recommends it: pick a text-book example, do it, and get warm smiles, a pile of compliments and even the occasional embrace. Every body walks away happy and, sometimes, smug.

Bravery's something else. I used to think it was a peculiar gift of Americans, to be brave. I used to think we were tuned into injustice and that we, frankly, would not let it stand. Not because we were nice. God no. But because we understood, collectively, that an injustice visited us all. Know what I mean?

Actually, I still believe that. I still see that injustice compromises a community. I'm not so sure people even bother with justifying or rationalizing or figuring out a way to excuse themselves, but when they are witness to an episode and take no action, it seems to bruise them. It twists some chord inside that links them to the truth.

I'm guessing. I don't know what really happens. I know what happens in me. And I know what people say after the fact: they wish they'd said something. They wish they'd done something. They wish they'd intervened. They wish they'd nipped something in the bud. The wish is sacrificed to the rule of niceness.

I am not brave, not unless you use a relative measure, in which case I'm plenty brave. But I'm not, so ... there you go. When I step up to the plate, I put little at risk. That's not to say I calculate. That's to say I get it, ahead of time: I'm pretty well protected. Quick review of recent episodes: the only thing I had to fear losing was the appearance of friendship, cozy commeraderie (or however that's spelled). In my life, that's a perfect litmus test, conducted in less time than it takes to type it out.

Rosa Parks was brave. Really, really brave. Seems she got way more than her fair share of virtues, because all accounts have her being really nice too.

I was raised not to think of Rosa Parks as a hero, but as what I should model myself after. A hero would have made her mythic and let me curl up to nice stories of 'what she did.'

No, I was taught to aim for half her bravery. And to not ever ever read bravery and social justice as a question of protecting anyone. My childhood was populated by people like Dick Gregory and Wilma Rudolph and Ted Wheeler - they sure as hell didn't need protection. They needed just a little bravery.

We get more spineless, more testicle-less (?) by the second. Rosa Parks died and the press ran out to get comment; a common theme was/is how magnificent, that the common woman/man could make such a difference.

Step away from the hallmark fucking greeting card. Her act, her life was bigger than that. And she was no common woman. No she was not.

Rosa Parks, civil rights heroine, is dead
Monday, October 24, 2005

BY CASSANDRA SPRATLING, FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

When Rosa Parks refused to get up, an entire race of people began to stand up for their rights as human beings.

It was a simple act that took extraordinary courage in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955. It was a place where black people had no rights white people had to respect. It was a time when racial discrimination was so common, many blacks never questioned it.

At least not out loud.

But then came Rosa Parks.

This mild-mannered black woman refused to give up her seat on a city bus so a white man could sit down.

Jim Crow laws had met their match.

Parks' refusal infused 50,000 blacks in Montgomery with the will to walk rather than risk daily humiliation on the city's buses.

This gentle giant, whose quietness belied her toughness, became the catalyst for a movement that broke the back of legalized segregation in the United States, gave rise to the astounding leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and inspired fighters for freedom and justice throughout the world.

Parks, the beloved mother of the civil rights movement, is dead, a family member confirmed late Monday.

But already it's evident that her spirit lives in hundreds of thousands of people inspired by her unwavering commitment to work for a better world - a commitment that continued even after age and failing health slowed her in the 1990s.
In death as in life, she touched the well known and the little known people of the world.