Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Rosa on a Pedestal
Rosa Parks statue unveiled at Capitol
When I was high school, a full decade after Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama bus, she was already being portrayed as the "Good Negro, " a rather ordinary African-American who just became fed up with being disrespected. That was easier to sell to the White Folks Up North. Our segregation was de facto.
That wasn't Rosa Parks. She'd had been a civil rights activist for decades in a place where it could get you killed. A few months before her act, she had attended Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, which trained union & civil rights activists. Rosa Parks fought for justice her entire life.
On the occasion of this unveiling. Mary C. Curtis wrote: "And let’s hope that as the country places Rosa Parks on a pedestal, it can pay her the tribute of letting her step down from it and be appreciated for the complex, beautiful, righteously angry woman she was."
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
When I was high school, a full decade after Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama bus, she was already being portrayed as the "Good Negro, " a rather ordinary African-American who just became fed up with being disrespected. That was easier to sell to the White Folks Up North. Our segregation was de facto.
That wasn't Rosa Parks. She'd had been a civil rights activist for decades in a place where it could get you killed. A few months before her act, she had attended Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, which trained union & civil rights activists. Rosa Parks fought for justice her entire life.
On the occasion of this unveiling. Mary C. Curtis wrote: "And let’s hope that as the country places Rosa Parks on a pedestal, it can pay her the tribute of letting her step down from it and be appreciated for the complex, beautiful, righteously angry woman she was."
Labels: human rights
