The death of Rosa Parks is already old news at this point. A week in today’s 24-hour journalistic environment may as well be six months, and I’ve probably let the iron grow cold when it comes to writing this entry. Even so, I’d still like to say a few words about the passing of this remarkable woman.
I’m assuming most everybody knows who Rosa was and what she did that was so important. If you don’t, then shame on you, or, more accurately, shame on an educational system that doesn’t teach the things that really matter.
Rosa Parks was, in the simplest and most convenient terms, a hero, the purest and most admirable kind of hero. She wasn’t an athlete or a soldier covered in medals and glory. She wasn’t physically imposing and, so far as I know, she wasn’t any more intelligent than anyone else. She was just an average woman who had a job and a family and was trying to get through life the best way she could. And one day she got tired of the injustice and ignorance she encountered each and every day, and she simply said to herself, “Enough.” She stood up against those who would have denied her her dignity, and, in so doing, she quite literally changed this country for the better. In that, she wasn’t so different from the men who started this country. I believe revolutions begin when ordinary people simply decide they’ve had enough of the crap.
She got in trouble for her actions, ended up getting arrested. I’ve seen her mug shot in many of the news stories about her this week, and I think it’s a fascinating photograph. She doesn’t look scared, but neither does she look like a fiery-eyed martyr burning with dedication for a cause. Mostly she just looks irritated. Her eyes are filled with disdain for the ridiculousness of a system that would condemn her for choosing the wrong place to sit. As I said, just an average woman who has had enough of the nonsense.
I have always tended to admire swashbuckling, larger-than-life characters — explorers, adventurers, rogues, and scoundrels — but recently I’ve come to appreciate the heroism of people like Rosa Parks, the unassuming, quiet people who only want to live their lives in peace but who do what they must when circumstances demand it. When it comes to the hero business, they really are the most remarkable ones, the ones who have the most to lose and the most to gain, and often they are the ones who have to rise the farthest to do the right thing. Rosa Parks rose far indeed, and she deserves all the honors this nation can bestow upon her.
