THE DEATH OF ROSA PARKS

12-1-55 - This date started a new era in American history. It was a day a seamstress in Alabama refused to give up her seat on a bus.

She was not the first person to do that but the NAACP had refused to take up their cause because these earlier protesters had something in their personal history which might have reflected negatively on the fight for equal rights.

Rosa Park's personal life was impeccable. When the NAACP took up her cause, a young minister, Martin Luther King Jr also entered the fight for equal rights and rose to prominence in the Civil Rights which Rosa Parks actually began by her passive resistence. Her simple act of defiance changed a nation. She is a model for the courage of humanity.

Yet one wonders, 60 years later, how would Rosa Parks feel about the anger and violence which has erupted between the races? 60 years later, no one has to sit in any particular place on a bus. The racial division is more subtle and yet paradoxically more vocal. It may take another 60 years for people to stop hating one another simply because of differences in their personal backgrounds. This new century is off to a bad start. Both antisemitism and racism are far from dead. One wonders how Rosa Parks would feel about a group of people who want to kill or subjugate people of a different religion and different life style.

Rosa Parks died today - October 25, 2005