Remembering Rosa Parks

[Editor's Note: This piece comes to us from Fe. I put it up ( in addition to the NYT obituary of Parks on the thread below) because it includes a personal remembrance of how Parks affected the life of its writer, who is a person of color.]

It was like any other day, in Montgomery, Alabama, when a white man approached a black woman who had taken a seat on the bus, asking her to move to the back. She refused.

"Are you going to stand up?" the bus driver asked.

"No," she answered.

"Well, by God, I'm going to have you arrested," the driver said.

"You may do that," she responded.

And they promptly arrested her.

That woman was Rosa Parks. By refusing to give up her seat, she became the catalyzing agent that set off the 381-day Montgomery Bus boycott, and the blossoming of the civil rights movement in America.

"At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this," "It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in."

I was almost a year old when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Because of her, I grew up in a world where I never had to bow, scrape, or imagine myself less than. It was through people like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and later, Cesar Chavez, Bobby Kennedy that an America that lived up to its highest, most fearless ideals came to full flower.

"I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die — the dream of freedom and peace."

For Rosa Parks, from all of us who work for justice and peace, we hold you in our hearts like a poem and a prayer.