In fourth or fifth grade, I was evading my math class responsibilities one day by surreptitiously tucking a book on the civil rights movement into my textbook. (Who needs to know how to multiply three-digit numbers, anyway?) It was there that I first learned about Rosa Parks.
An ordinary woman, exhausted from a long day's work, taking a seat on a Montgomery city bus and resting her tired feet for a few minutes. A man approaches--probably not a wealthy man, or a powerful man (he was riding the bus, after all), but with one clear advantage over her: the color of his skin. He orders her to get up and give him her seat.
And to Mrs. Parks, the absurdity of this commonplace abuse, the unnecessary cruelty of her enforced second-class status, just becomes too much for her to put up with at this moment. Perhaps she is freshly energized by a recent NAACP meeting. Perhaps she is just more tired than usual. But for whatever reason, she finds the courage to respond to this indignity with the terseness it deserves:
"No."
No, I won't give you my seat. No, I don't think you're any more deserving than I am of a place of relative comfort on this bus that I paid my fare for, just the same as you; that my tax dollars go to maintain, just the same as yours. No. Just leave me alone. Just treat me like anyone else.
The bus system boycott that resulted (and lasted over a year); the prominence it gave to a previously obscure young minister named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; how could Rosa Parks have dreamed that one little word from her would be the snowball that started rolling down a hill and turned into an avalanche that swept away de jure segregation throughout the country?
She didn't have a college degree or a church congregation to back her up. She'd never been a public speaker or an author; she was just one woman who made a choice not to participate in something she knew was wrong.
What could we change today, if as moms and teachers and pet owners and realtors and storytellers and scrapbookers and ordinary citizens, we decided to stop putting up with things we know are wrong but have "always been this way?" What could we do if we opened our mouths and simply said, "No?"
I have always admired her quiet determination as well.
May her Memory be Eternal.
Posted by: Mimi | October 25, 2005 at 01:22 PM
Well said. I feel like I have been saying NO for 5 years now and no one is Washington or the press is hearing me.
Posted by: Susan | October 25, 2005 at 02:48 PM
I'm right there with Susan, in spite of what seems to be a majority sayihg "no," our words aren't having the impact of that one word spoken by Ms. Parks.
Wonderful tribute to a wonderful human being, Molly.
Posted by: Gwyn | October 26, 2005 at 06:39 PM
This post gave me chills, Molly. It was such a big thing, that she could do so much with a little word.
Posted by: Amy Sorensen | October 26, 2005 at 10:23 PM