In Memoriam: Rosa Parks

Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks has died at the age of 92.

With the simple refusal to move to the back of a bus, Parks set off a cahin of events that would change America forever. In a world of prejudice and hate, Parks refused to be pushed down. Martin Luther King and other orators deservedly get a lot of the credit for the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, but they would have been totally ineffective without the support of millions of ordinary African-Americans like Rosa Parks.

I was born quite a number of years after that historic moment on a bus in Montgomery, but I still owe much to Rosa Parks. She played a major role in creating the increasingly colorblind nation in which I grew up. Thanks to people like her, I have never had to deal with a segregated society. I have never been forced to watch other humans treated with the disrespect that was once so common; and that is such a blessing in and of itself.

Rosa Parks did so much to help alter the laws, but also the core values of this great nation. For that, this white man owes her a tremendous debt of gratitude.

Rest in Peace.


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