Tuesday, October 25, 2005
RIP: Rosa Parks, Dead at 92
Rosa Parks dead at 92 years of age.Rosa Parks, a seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama, who would not give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955, died Monday at the age of 92. Historians mark the date of her quiet-but-revolutionary act as the start of the modern civil rights movement in the United States. —Voice of America
Rosa Parks who became the “mother of the civil rights movement” by refusing to give up her seat on that fateful Montegomery, Alabama bus has died. She was 92 years old.
Rosa was just a 42 year old seamstress when she refused to get up for a white man. She’ll be remembered as a hero and a symbol of civil rights for many, but I’d like to remember her for just who she was. A hard working, black woman, tired and with hurting feet, who didn’t feel like she should be treated any differently than anyone else. She got there first, she paid, and she got a seat; and she was just tired enough to believe that she should keep it. I remember reading this quote from Parks, “that my feet were hurting and I didn’t know why I refused to stand up when they told me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long.”
I always read that statement as a testament to both her strength as a person, and some vital but illusive truth about movements. Mrs. Parks didn’t plan to spark a movement. She just wanted to be treated with some dignity. She had no idea that her arrest would serve as catalyst to a cause and inspire Nobel Peace Prize, and then, little-known minister, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. to trigger a 381-day boycott of the bus system.
Movements need heros, people to rally around whether on the right or left. Rosa provided great inspiration for the left—the civil rights movement. But what I think about most of Rosa is that she was the worker bee. Though she probably won’t be remembered for it, she spent a large portion of her life trying to get black youth to learn—to know their rights and to believe in their freedoms and theirself. Like so many trying to instill values and ideology in todays youth, she probably often felt like she was losing the battle of education to the glory of immediate gratification.
Rest in peace.
[Updated: 28 Oct 2005, 11:49AM, Central]
I’ve been reading, Mike Evangelist’s excerpts from, ”Jobs I’ve Known” an online book, being published at Writer’s Block Live. While, hoping to get more insight into the creative process of Steve Jobs and Apple, I also read this post, Apple - Thinking Different Again. The post is about Apple’s recent front page memorial to Rosa Parks. I found the article touching. Apple is one of, if not the only company, in Corporate America who offered any type of memorial to Rosa (excluding news sources, of course). And this post, Apple - Thinking Different Again, gives some insight into an organizational culture that has the heart to provide these touches.
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