randy_byers | RIP Rosa Parks (Reply)

Nice article about Rosa Parks on Slate by Diane McWhorter. I am shamefully ignorant about the history of the US civil rights movement, but whenever I read a little about it or watch a documentary (i.e., the amazing Eyes on the Prize, which I saw years ago), I get the chills that come with awe. Since I'm apparently going to live out my adult life in an extended period of retrenchment, it's heartening to read about such powerful tides of change for the better in the past. One of the nice things about this short article is that it mentions factional disputes within the movement. It's good to be reminded that human squabbling and resentment was involved even at the heart of such a social sea change. Elsewhere I've been reminded that Rosa Parks was not comfortable on the public stage, was not a larger-than-life personality, and yet her small gesture of defiance, arrived at after years of communal work and thought on the problem of segregation, played an enormous part in the complex process of making history. The article quotes Martin Luther King: Rosa Parks "had been tracked down by the zeitgeist —- the spirit of the time." It's enough to give you the chills.