Rosa Parks Moment

SincceMartin Luther King day is next week, I thought I would share some information about Rosa Parks. I came upon this in Utne, one of my favorite magazines. It was in the Jan-Feb issue and written by Paul Rogat Loeb, an author of two books, both of which have some more writings about Ms. Parks.

The popular concept of Rosa Parks is that she was an unwitting figure in the chain of events that lead to the bus boycott and eventually to the civil rights struggles. I know this was my feeling about her. In fact, she began by going to a meeting, and then another and began to establish a group of people who would support her. She began to speak up about injustices.

After 10 or 11 years, and with the encouragement of her husband, she went to her first NAACP meeting and from then we can imagine how she came to be on a bus in Montgomery Alabama, and refused to give up her seat to a white person.

Loeb suggests that change is a product of deliberate actions and whether they are small actions or large, they can fail or they can result in life changing and/or world altering events. each of us can, in fact, be agents for change in our own arenas.