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Homage to RosaOctober 25, 2005 Rosa Parks died last night in Detroit, age 92. Rosa lives Rosa lives Rosa lives . . . Rosa Parks was admitted to the civil rights pantheon decades ago, at least in part because after the pantheon-builders reeled off the names of W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, Paul Robeson, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., James Meredith, et al., they got a little nervous when they noticed that these were all men. Almost certainly these pantheon-builders knew that women, not to mention school-age girls, were part of the backbone and sinew of the civil rights movement; if they forgot, many of them had mothers and grandmothers, aunts and sisters and daughters there to refresh their memories. Rosa Parks was admitted to the pantheon. In the process, oddly enough, she was transformed into a little old lady who up till December 1, 1955, had had nary a political thought in her head; she just stayed in that seat because she was too tired to move. The real story is more interesting, and more inspiring. Born in 1913, she was a civil rights activist before she got out of her teens. At the time of her arrest, she was secretary of the local NAACP chapter; the previous summer, she had attended -- with the encouragement and sponsorship of Virginia and Clifford Durr, previous employers who had become her friends -- a training workshop on racial desegregation at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. In her autobiography she wrote, "I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in." She wasn't too tired to agree to let hers become the test case that eventually broke the back of U.S. segregation laws. No accidental activist she. Her courage cost her, too. She lost her job. Her husband, Raymond, quit his after his boss decreed that no one was to discuss the case. In August 1957, after months and months of death threats, the Parkses moved to Detroit. In memory of Rosa Parks, I'm playing James Keelaghan's "Turn of the Wheel." (OK, I'll be honest: I've played it six times in the last half hour.)
Don't know about you, but I keep losing sight of this. It's too damn easy to sit when you're supposed to stand, stand when you're supposed to sit, and shut up when you're the only person in the vicinity who knows what to say. I think I'll play "Turn of the Wheel" another six times before moving on to the next song. Rosa lives . . .
P.P.S. I don't think Keelaghan is God. I've never crossed paths with God. I did see Keelaghan at Club Passim a year ago, and I have a signed copy of the Compadres CD to prove it. P.P.P.S. I swiped a bunch of info from a very good story in today's online Washington Post. Patricia Sullivan, "Bus Ride Shook a Nation's Conscience," October 25, 2005. It's well worth reading.
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