Walking in the Valley A weekly column for those who live and walk in Silicon Valley by Barbara Dahlgren

An Act Of Courage Column for the weeks of November 1-15, 2005

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Courage is multifaceted and can have different meanings for different people. However, primarily it involves having a spirit or strength to face danger, pain or the unknown. One act of courage can propel an ordinary person into a hero. Such was the case with Rosa Parks when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in the winter of 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama.

Rosa, a 42 year old seamstress, was returning home from a hard day of work. She was tired but no more so than anyone who works hard for a living. But she was more that tired, she was weary: weary of feeling like a second class citizen because of her race, weary of humiliations, weary of segregation, weary of racism, weary of Jim Crow laws, weary of the Klan, weary of not having any rights, weary of many bus rides home.

Bus rides in Montgomery could make black people weary. Montgomery segregation laws said blacks had to pay their fares to the driver, then get off and re-board through the back door. Sometimes the bus driver would drive off before the paid customers made it to the back entrance. If the white section was full and another white customer entered, blacks were required to give up their seats and move farther to the back. A black person was not even allowed to sit across the aisle from whites. These humiliations were compounded by the fact that two-thirds of the bus riders in Montgomery were black.

On that winter day, Rosa Parks was tired and weary. "Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it!" Parks recounts in her autobiography, My Story.

So on December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man and the rest as they say is history. Historians consider this one act the beginning of the civil rights movement in our country. Rosa was arrested and fined, tried and found guilty. A 381 day Montgomery bus boycott followed, raising up an unknown clergyman, Martin Luther King, Jr., to national recognition. Rosa appealed her conviction and in November of 1956 the Supreme Court ruled segregation on transportation was unconstitutional.

Rosa wasn’t the first black woman to be fined for not going to the back of the bus. However, she was the first one who was not only above moral reproach (securely married, reasonably employed) but possessed a quiet fortitude to withstand media scrutiny. She also had a background in the civil rights area. She had served as secretary of the NAACP and later Adviser to the NAACP Youth Council, and tried to register to vote on several occasions when it was still nearly impossible to do so. She did know what not to do if she was ever evicted from a bus: don't frown, don't struggle, don't shout, and don't pay the fine.

It almost seemed like she had been preparing for this her whole life. Maybe God placed her there for a time like this. Such was the case of Esther who was plucked from obscurity to be made a queen and then had the opportunity to save her people from annihilation. When a decree to kill all the Jews was circulated, Esther could have remained in her cozy castle to see what would happen. Maybe God would have intervened. Instead she was encouraged to look at it from a different point of view. God may have placed her there “for such a time as this.” (Esther 4:13-14)

Rosa and Esther could have just waited for someone else to do something but they didn’t. They probably didn’t know a simple act of courage could change the world when they stepped out on faith to do what they felt needed to be done. Esther’s people were spared and Rosa Parks became known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”

Life wasn’t easy for the Parks after the Supreme Court ruling. They experienced economic retaliation from the white establishment. Rosa lost her job and faced regular threats because of what she had done. In 1957 they moved to Detroit , Michigan just to be able to make a living. However, Rosa ’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement continued. Over the next 40 years she helped make people everywhere aware of the civil rights struggle. She felt she was put here on this earth to make the world a better place. All in all, not a bad philosophy to live by!

Rosa Parks led a full life. She died in her sleep on October 24, 2005 in her home in Detroit at the age of 92. She had received many awards including the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was the first woman (and second African American) to lie in public view in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington , D.C. , an honor usually reserved for U.S. presidents and war heroes. Many Americans paid tribute to her including President Bush and members of Congress who laid wreaths by her casket while a choir sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Be sure to visit this page often to read the next edition of Walking in the Valley. You can write to the author at bdahlgren@wcgsouthbay.org.