February, 4, 2013
Rosa Parks, Now and Forever
Rosa Parks is credited with launching the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her seat to a white person while traveling home by bus after work one afternoon in December 1955. Today would have been her 100th birthday. A more complete picture of her life and activism is now becoming more widely known. In the words of Amy Goodman on the Truthdig website: “After she died at the age of 92 in 2005, much of the media described her as a tired seamstress, no troublemaker. But the media got it wrong. Rosa Parks was a first-class troublemaker.” Parks would not have called it “troublemaking” but rather rebellion—rebellion against the way African-Americans were being treated as less than fully human under the Jim Crow laws. She was determined not to tolerate such treatment any longer and to work for change. You can listen to Rosa Parks tell her own story by clicking on the mp3 sound icon on the Democracy Now website. The U.S. Postal Service is honoring Rosa Parks with a new stamp commemorating her 100th birthday today.
