Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks died in her home in Detroit October 24 at the age of 92. There has always been something about Rosa Parks that had interested me. I mean aside from the obvious that she is known for. Such a simple act that rocked a nation....I loved what she was quoted as saying when she was arrested and the honest response that she got in return..."Why do you push us around?"..."I do not know, but the law is the law and you are under arrest." A simple act and an honest answer that brought clearly into light something a nation had not wanted to look at.

But it is something more than just her role in history that interests me. It is the intelligence and kindness that was so apparent in her eyes. She was a beautiful woman, both inside and outside, and it shows in her eyes. It also shows in the mark that she has left on this world. Both the public marks that everyone witnessed and were spoke of during her funeral proceedings and the private marks that I am confident she put on everyone that ever came in contact with her. You can see it in her face that that no one could have been in her presence and not in some way been changed.

Her passing made me wonder a few things. I was fortunate to grow up without being taught intolerance or ignorance. Although in someways I was perhaps sheltered from major racial conflicts, I did not grow up under a rock. The community which I grew up in was small but it was diverse. I went to school with Asians, Indians, native Americans and blacks. There were often exchange students within the student body. And I looked at it all as normal and interesting. I will not claim to have no prejudices because I think that is irrational to claim. I fear the unknown but I hope I have never let it stop me. In the most simplistic form I believe prejudice is born within a fear of the unknown and without the desire to understand.

I feel and I think. I hurt and I cry. I laugh and I smile. And I have always assumed everyone else does also. Maybe in different ways and for different reasons but more like me than different from me. That is not to say that we are all alike. What a dull world it would be if we were...each unique, each beautiful. These thoughts are not my own....they were taught to me everyday in a variety of ways.

What would I be now if I had been brought up different? What if I was taught to fear differences, to believe in superiority and inferiority?

Rosa Parks' death made me ponder the idea for quite some time. I tried to imagine what I would have thought and felt if I had been a white girl in the south in the 1950s. I also tried to imagine who I would have been if I had been a white boy. What if I had been born a black girl....a black boy? In a time and place where no one was immune to prejudice, what would I have learned and what would I have believed. I would like to imagine that I would have looked at life through the eyes of a child in that time and somehow would have known that this was all wrong and somehow made a difference...but looking at the people of the time and their beliefs, I wonder if I truly would have. I am very thankful to have been taught what I was taught rather than to believe what some believed, and sadly some still believe.

Change is very slow. Maybe we humans will never figure it out. However, Rosa Parks had figured some of it out and that one small woman made a huge difference. There is power in one even against the odds.