Rosa's New Bus Travels from Here to Eternity:

Sister Parks feud with White bus driver was final straw on a bloody year for southern Blacks.

The most maligned persona in Civil Rights folklore finally met with her ancestors on 10/24/05 after being blessed with a long earthly life. Yet over the years, Rosa Parks' status has been relegated to the back of the double-decker Civil Rights/Black Liberation bus by the historical hounds of revisionism and trivia. Hollywood has taken it's potshots at her, American households don't really know her, all of this was for the purpose of implying that she wasn't really thinking about anyone but herself. Just a typical trifling sassy Black woman devoid of collective Black causes-like many of today's Black females. But the Montgomery AL seamstress was already a secretary in the NAACP, and in 1955 it's Mississippi membership dropped rapidly from 4,639 to 1,716 due to intimidation led by a southern segregationist organization known as the Citizens Council and a southern spy agency; the Sovereignty Commission.

Black life in Ole' Miss and Alabama was at it's lowest value ever, though reportedly there hadn't been a lynching since 1952, a new series of lynchings in Mississippi began with the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in late August of bloody '55, by December Rosa Parks and fate became irretrievably linked. The popular myth connected to Parks was something along the lines of her being so tired and her feet were hurting, so she just took a seat at the front of the bus (the White section), and refused to move, upon orders by the driver to give up her seat to a White man. But your appreciation for her grows once you realize the issue runs much deeper. You see, Parks was already sitting in the middle of the bus when she was asked to give up her seat. The middle seats was sort of a neutral zone, Blacks were allowed to sit in those rows, as long as no Whites were standing. She tells it best during an interview: "That particular day that I decided, was not the first time I had trouble with that particular driver.

He evicted me before because I would not go around to the back door after I was already on the bus (this was 12 years prior to the 12/1/55 incident). The evening that I boarded the bus, and noticed that he was the same driver, I decided to get on anyway. I did not sit at the very front of the bus, I took a seat with a man who was next to the window-the first seat that was allowed for 'colored' people to sit in.(italics our)"

As the story goes, the bus made it's routine stops, the empty seats in Black and White sections became filled, when two Whites got on, the driver ordered several Black riders in the middle to stand so that a White man could sit. They refused to move until the driver barked the order a 2nd time, and at least 2 Blacks eventually got off the bus, Parks didn't. The driver went out of the bus to get a police officer, and when he returned she was arrested. The incident led that city's Black community to organize a 381 day bus boycott that they won, and a new crop of young Black leaders became nationally known, Martin Luther King, foremost among them. Rosa Parks really doesn't have to prove to me whether she did what she did out of planning, it makes no difference to me. But understand one thing, the value of a split second decision that eventually turns out right. In fact, if Parks' act was one of spontaneity, I feel much better. It's a more accurate barometer of where a persons heart truly is.

Jesse Jackson plans things, Al Sharpton plans things, Minister Farrakhan plans things, and then they go home to their mansions by flying first class. Why? Because of Rosa. Of course that's no slight on the previous 3, Martin Planned things, but he knew he was going to die, the same goes for Malcolm and Medgar. Those things are valuable, but you can't beat good unpremeditated acts with a stick.

So in spite of that one fateful day, some of us have had a tough time filing Rosa in our memory banks. She wasn't controversial, she didn't have a criminal life previous to her joining the NAACP, she didn't have a string of boyfriends, she didn't rail angrily about the White man, or preach Mao, or self-defense, or have a ten-point program, or an economic plan for Blacks. This woman's claim to fame was to utter the most unsexy word of all, "no." I'm sorry, but if you are a man, hearing no just doesn't make it. Maybe that's part of the reason we never completely recognized her stance. No, you see, has power, and in that moment sister Parks said it, she empowered a nation

On December 1st, the 50th anniversary of Parks stand, Montgomery will observe a Montgomery Child Walk to commemorate Parks courageous act. It will begin at the same spot she was arrested, to the State Capitol building.