ROSA PARKS

ROSA PARKS

She was a small, quiet black woman. She worked hard as a seamstress all day. All she wanted to do was take a bus home from work on December 1, 1955 in her home town of Montgomery, Alabama. But there was a city ordinance that said she had to give up her seat on the bus if a white person wanted it. A white man asked for her seat and she refused to give it up. She was arrested and a local young preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr. took up her cause and started the year-long boycott of the city bus system which changed the rules and blacks no longer had to sit in the back of the bus or let whites take their seats. This began the modern civil rights movement that led to massive changes in the 1960’s.

Today I witnessed George W. Bush praising Rosa Parks on TV. The irony and hypocrisy of this event cannot go by without comment – at least not by me. As a person who has done much to crush dissent in this country, Mr. Bush is not qualified to utter Ms. Parks name. Long after he is gone and forgotten (and that cannot come too soon), her name will be known as one of the brave people who stood up against the bullies like him. Bush is the anti-Rosa Parks: a person born into privilege who has not a shred of compassion for those less fortunate. She had the strength and courage to defy an unjust system.

Rest in peace, Rosa. You did good.