I was really moved this past week when I heard that Rosa Parks would be the first woman to be laid in state at her death, in honor of her actions that helped spark the Civil Rights movement and bring African-American pastors and community leaders together to start the year-long Montgomery bus boycott. There is a small room devoted to her at the Montgomery Civil Rights museum, (next to a small room for Ghandi and a larger room for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.). I’m glad that I got to see that one piece of Rosa’s life and get a refresher on the Civil Right’s struggle by visiting this museum, the 16th St Baptist Church, and other southern sites on my Sankofa journey last year. Here’s a quote from a journalist reflecting on Rosa:
“That night on the bus, she wasn’t a movement, wasn’t an icon. She was just a woman, one woman who’d had enough, who refused to comply any longer with a system that dehumanized her.
Her death reminds us that there is no number more powerful than one, no word more potent than no.
And no force more compelling than a soul grown exhausted enough for change.”
– Leonard Pitts, Jr., Free Press Journalist, in an article in the Appleton Post Crescent