Dan Rather
THE FRONT-PAGE obituary for Rosa Parks in last week's New York Times contains a recollection from the later life of the civil-rights pioneer, in which she laughingly recounted that schoolchildren sometimes wanted to know "if I was alive during slavery times. They equate me along with Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and ask if I knew them." It is a quote in keeping with the image of a gentle, courteous woman who seemed at times bemused by her icon status.
But these words also point to some of the value there was in having Rosa Parks still with us in America: As long as she lived, she stood as a reminder that the Jim Crow era of forced racial segregation, while history, was not so far behind us. It was something that had happened, for many of us, within our lifetimes - and in the lifetime of a courageous black woman who, at the right time and in the right place, refused to give up her bus seat so that a white man might sit.
Rosa Parks' death landed quietly in a week with so much going on at home and abroad. Amid news of hurricanes and prosecutors and mounting death tolls in Iraq, it would be easy to make quick note of the soft-spoken hero's passing and move on. I hope that we don't do that.
PROBLEM OF THE COLOUR-LINE
At the beginning of the last century, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour-line." In the middle of that century, Rosa Parks addressed this problem in a personal and dignified way, in her hometown of Montgomery, Ala. With the century behind us - and the problem of the colour line erased from our legal codes but not wholly eradicated from our society - we might marvel at what the then 42-year-old seamstress set in motion from her seat on a city bus.
The Montgomery bus boycott introduced the world to a young preacher named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It put the first national spotlight on the long-standing struggles and aspirations of black Americans. It led to a Supreme Court decision that continued the dismantling of legalised segregation that had begun in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The life of Rosa Parks demands a long, lingering thought because of her role as spark to the burning flame of the civil-rights movement.
But as big and important as this legacy is, there is also another reason Ms. Parks' passing might give us pause. Her long-time employer, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, remembered Parks as "very humble ... soft-spoken. But inside she had a determination that was quite fierce." In her attitude, and in the application of her ferocity to injustice, Rosa Parks seemed the very soul - or essence, if one prefers a more secular word - of what America strives to be. And of what, at its very best, it can be.
SHE SET AN EXAMPLE
We will remember Rosa Parks. Of that you can be certain. But when we remember her, I hope that we remember her not only as a great African-American and civil-rights pioneer - though these facts are crucial to understanding our history and cannot, should not, be set aside. But I hope we also remember her as a great American - with no modifiers or qualifications - who set an example for all of us. Dr. King once said of Rosa Parks that she was "not one of the finest Negro citizens - but one of the finest citizens in Montgomery." She was also one of the finest citizens of America.
Dan Rather is a television broadcaster (c) 2005 DJR Inc. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
