Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks (1913-2005)
Notes From Zone 4
Occasional Writing from Blayney Colmore
October 25, 2005
She was the Black Madonna of the American soul.
The legend says she refused to give up her seat on that bus because her feet were tired. In a radio interview 25 years ago, replayed on this morning’s news, she said of course she was tired; she worked as a domestic servant. But there was nothing wrong with her feet.
She refused to get up because she knew justice demanded that she stay.
Fifty years ago. Seems an eternity. Not because justice has been served since, but because Rosa Parks now seems like a member of an extinct species.
Cindy Sheehan may be the closest we have today. The voice of an outraged conscience, railing against the abuses of power that rob human beings of their dignity and even their lives.
Rosa Parks was arrested for violating the Jim Crow laws in Montgomery. Cindy Sheehan was arrested for challenging the right of the president to spend her son’s life to prove our nation’s fragile manhood.
Something has changed in us in those fifty years, something even more than some of us having been chastened by time.
Having grown up in the segregated south, I knew what was at stake, a culture, a whole way of life. And it frightened me. But having sat in the front of the bus, watched negroes get on through the back door and stand while there were empty seats around me, feeling miserable, I understood in my deepest places it had to change. I wondered what would happen to me and my family, who were living on the largesse of that old system. But I knew it had to change. And finally, after facing down my fears, I joined the movement.
And found my own soul.
Our national soul is at stake in our occupation of Iraq and our handing over the reins of power to corporate America as surely as it was in racial injustice in 1960. The horror of being the nation that practices torture,
Al Gore spoke for me recently when he said the surest way to distance yourself from intimacy with your own soul is to feel you must dominate and destroy those who differ with you.
And yet I have not taken to the streets. Yet.
It has become a cliché to say that the whole world changed on 9/11. What changed was our surrendering to our fear and giving free rein to those who have long been eager to use American power to dominate the world.
We have stood by and watched the dismantling of American partnership with the rest of the world. We are the world’s bullies.
There is room for honest disagreement about the role of government; there is no room for disagreement about the American ideal of justice for all people everywhere.
Saturday night I was wakened by the sound of sleet on our tin roof. After an hour or so the sound stopped. In the morning I saw the sleet had changed to snow; a beautiful early winter scene. On the road in front of our house a bare spot where someone had tossed a Happy Meal© out their car window. The nearest McDonald’s is 25 miles from here.
I picked up the trash on my walk down to the post office. I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the greasy French fries. By the time I walked back the crows had seen to the fries.
I wonder; will we wait for the crows to clean up after us?
© Blayney Colmore
Notes From Zone 4
Occasional Writing from Blayney Colmore
October 25, 2005
She was the Black Madonna of the American soul.
The legend says she refused to give up her seat on that bus because her feet were tired. In a radio interview 25 years ago, replayed on this morning’s news, she said of course she was tired; she worked as a domestic servant. But there was nothing wrong with her feet.
She refused to get up because she knew justice demanded that she stay.
Fifty years ago. Seems an eternity. Not because justice has been served since, but because Rosa Parks now seems like a member of an extinct species.
Cindy Sheehan may be the closest we have today. The voice of an outraged conscience, railing against the abuses of power that rob human beings of their dignity and even their lives.
Rosa Parks was arrested for violating the Jim Crow laws in Montgomery. Cindy Sheehan was arrested for challenging the right of the president to spend her son’s life to prove our nation’s fragile manhood.
Something has changed in us in those fifty years, something even more than some of us having been chastened by time.
Having grown up in the segregated south, I knew what was at stake, a culture, a whole way of life. And it frightened me. But having sat in the front of the bus, watched negroes get on through the back door and stand while there were empty seats around me, feeling miserable, I understood in my deepest places it had to change. I wondered what would happen to me and my family, who were living on the largesse of that old system. But I knew it had to change. And finally, after facing down my fears, I joined the movement.
And found my own soul.
Our national soul is at stake in our occupation of Iraq and our handing over the reins of power to corporate America as surely as it was in racial injustice in 1960. The horror of being the nation that practices torture,
Al Gore spoke for me recently when he said the surest way to distance yourself from intimacy with your own soul is to feel you must dominate and destroy those who differ with you.
And yet I have not taken to the streets. Yet.
It has become a cliché to say that the whole world changed on 9/11. What changed was our surrendering to our fear and giving free rein to those who have long been eager to use American power to dominate the world.
We have stood by and watched the dismantling of American partnership with the rest of the world. We are the world’s bullies.
There is room for honest disagreement about the role of government; there is no room for disagreement about the American ideal of justice for all people everywhere.
Saturday night I was wakened by the sound of sleet on our tin roof. After an hour or so the sound stopped. In the morning I saw the sleet had changed to snow; a beautiful early winter scene. On the road in front of our house a bare spot where someone had tossed a Happy Meal© out their car window. The nearest McDonald’s is 25 miles from here.
I picked up the trash on my walk down to the post office. I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the greasy French fries. By the time I walked back the crows had seen to the fries.
I wonder; will we wait for the crows to clean up after us?
© Blayney Colmore
posted by Blayney at 9:29 AM
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