Good night, Sister Rosa

I guess everyone knows by now that Rosa Parks died yesterday at the age of 92.

I hope everyone knows what she did, though I doubt it. What's so remarkable about the incident that brought her fame was its simplicity. In some ways, Cedric the Entertainer got it right in Barbershop:

Rosa Parks ain't do nothin' but set her black ass down.

Let's talk a little about this: Folklore would have us believe that Mrs. Parks one day in 1955 quite spontaneously refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to a white person. She thereby broke the law and got arrested, and when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his associates got wind of it, they initiated a boycott of Montgomery buses that lasted well over a year and touched off the Civil Rights Movement.

This isn't true, exactly. Historically, Mrs. Parks was no naive innocent caught up in a historical movement that was ready to pop with or without her. Unlike many participants in the bus boycott, she was not a domestic, but a skilled seamstress with some college education, and she had been working for the NAACP for some time. The plans for the boycott were ready when she got on that bus; before that, she had frequently surrendered her seat. Romantic as it sounds, Rosa Parks did not spring full-blown from the head of Zeus; if she had, the Civil Rights movement probably would have died of starvation before it ever got started.

And then there are those who find Mrs. Parks a little less than admirable in some respects. At the very least, it's a little ironic that she, who made her name by boycotting the Montgomery bus system, came again to public attention by boycotting the NAACP. Why? Because the man who recited the line "Rosa Park ain't do nothin' but set her black ass down" was hosting the NAACP Image Awards that year! Can you say "feet of clay"?

Well, but what did we expect, utter saintliness? Rosa Parks, like most heroes, was a flesh-and-blood human being who did something brave and noteworthy once because it was time. Perhaps, as a Caucasian, I have no right to call her "Sister". Then again, as a human being, perhaps I do.

Benshlomo says, I'm waiting for the next Rosa Parks.