Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Detroit cherishes indomitable spirit of civil rights pioneer

By Betty DeRamus / The Detroit News

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Rosa Parks wasn't shot down in her prime like other giants of the civil rights movement. She endured long enough to write books, reap honors and remind us again and again what can happen when someone with a made-up mind and a steely will rises up at the right hour.

Her story always starts with a small woman on a big bus filled with black people accustomed to moving to the backs of buses and mumbling, "Yes, Sir" and "No, Sir" while looking at the ground.

But Rosa Parks, who died Monday at 92, was never small, not where it counted. And the bus where she made her stand would have been a forgotten pile of scrap by now if she hadn't made it famous by refusing to move, on that unforgettable day in December 1955.

Over the years, the media and even some historians got her story wrong, describing her as a simple, foot-sore seamstress who got too tired one day during the exhausting holiday season to yield her bus seat to a white man.

They didn't point out that this was the same woman who often walked home to avoid buses that might drive away and leave you after you paid your fare and got off to re-enter the bus through the back door.

They didn't say that this was the same woman who had been the first female to join the Montgomery National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. They didn't write that this was the same Rosa Parks who had tried again and again to vote before finally succeeding.

In 1957, Parks moved to Detroit from Alabama with her husband, Raymond, looking for work and an end to the threats and harassments she and her family faced after the Montgomery bus boycott desegregated the city's buses.

Unlike Alabama, Detroit never erected any big splashy monuments to Rosa Parks -- no museum, no fountains and no plaques at the sites of her former homes. That doesn't mean she left no legacy.

Because she lived among us, The Detroit News and the Detroit Public Schools established a scholarship-granting foundation in her name. Because she lived among us, artists captured the dignity in her face, and a riot-scarred street and middle school bear her name.

Because she lived among us, we shared in her honors and got the chance to learn first-hand how people become legends -- building their legacies one step at a time without realizing they are creating a lasting work.

I'll never forget the day I heard her speak at a luncheon for scholarship winners. She urged the young people to tackle the major challenges of their time just as the people who joined her in the struggle against segregation had done. Yet she also acknowledged that they lived in times when, it often seemed, there were "more ways to do wrong than right."

Yes, it did often seem that way, but Parks was proof that one small, nonviolent and purposeful act could start a chain reaction that tore down walls, changed legal systems and gave a voice to people accustomed to mumbling, "Yes, Sir" and "No, Sir" while shambling to the backs of buses or staring at the ground.

You can reach Betty DeRamus at 313-222-2296 or bderamus@detnews.com.