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Inside U.S.A.: Let Us Honor Rosa Parks - By Shattering the Myths About Her
Monday, October 31 @ 04:59:49 UTC |  by Rick Chamberlin, commondreams.org
It is right and good that at this time we should celebrate and honor the life and legacy of Rosa Parks. Her brave, dignified act of civil disobedience on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955 precipitated a nonviolent protest movement that awakened our nation to the widespread injustice of discrimination and segregation.
But as we honor Rosa Parks and bid her soul rest, may we also lay to rest the myths that began to form about her almost immediately after she was arrested 50 years ago. In the long run, I believe these myths could do more harm than good to the unfinished struggle for equality in this country.
Perhaps the most damaging myth about Rosa is that she acted alone. In fact, she worked for years with other social justice and civil rights activists prior to her famous action. She served as a secretary for and was a member of her local NAACP chapter. She attended workshops at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee to study racial desegregation tactics and Gandhian resistance methods. While Rosa parks was led from that bus alone, there were many people behind her when she boarded it. Her decision to refuse to move to the back of the bus so that a white rider could have her seat was made in the context of a community.
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