Amy Goodman: Rosa Parks, Now and Forever

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from truthdig:


Rosa Parks, Now and Forever

Posted on Jan 30, 2013
By Amy Goodman


On Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala., thus launching the modern-day civil-rights movement. Monday, Feb. 4, is the 100th anniversary of her birth. 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.

Professor Jeanne Theoharis debunks the myth of the quiet seamstress in her new book “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.” Theoharis told me, “This is the story of a life history of activism, a life history that she would put it, as being ‘rebellious,’ that starts decades before her famous bus stand and ends decades after.”

She was born in Tuskegee, Ala., and raised to believe that she had a right to be respected, and to demand that respect. Jim Crow laws were entrenched then, and segregation was violently enforced. In Pine Level, where she lived, white children got a bus ride to school, while African-American children walked. Rosa Parks recalled: “But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world.”

In her late teens, Rosa met Raymond Parks, and they married. Rosa described Raymond Parks as the first activist she had ever met. He was a member of the local Montgomery NAACP chapter, and, when she learned that women were welcome at the meetings, she attended. She was elected the chapter’s secretary. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/rosa_parks_now_and_forever_20130130/

[xchrom]

1. du rec. nt

[chervilant]

2. Fear-based

The vast majority of our citizenry are fear-based and raise their children to believe in the religious mythologies of their forebears--promoting obeisance to paternalistic authority and the perception of women as soiled seducers of men. This ubiquitous psychic wound underpins the marginalization of #Occupy and virtually every other contemporary social protest.

Dare I hope that STILL YET a small group of concerned citizens can change our world?