Rosa Parks Statue, Montgomery, Alabama
Yesterday a statue of Rosa Parks was unveiled in Montgomery, Alabama. It is situated a few feet from the stop where she boarded a bus in 1955, sat in the available seat, then refused to move to the back to make room for a white passenger. She was arrested and charged with a crime. This was the beginning of a bus boycott in Montgomery which was a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights movement in the United States and brought a young clergyman named Martin Luther King Jr. into public leadership.
This is a story which I assumed I knew which portrays Parks as tired worker who had just had enough that day. There is truth to this telling but it misses the fact that Parks had been involved in Civil Rights for more than a decade, serving as secretary for the local NAACP, and had attended a rally in a church only a few days earlier for the murdered black youth, Emmett Till. Later she recalled that she thought of Till as she refused to move on the bus.
Parks remained active in the movement even though some men felt that her place ought to be in the kitchen, another form of discrimination.
The statue is a fitting tribute to a heroic Christian whose legacy continues. While she was an American, people of faith committed to justice can take inspiration from her witness and courage.
Rosa Parks Booking Photo 1955
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