Learning from Legends Rosa Parks and Mara Wellington

Rosa Parks died at the age of 92. That’s the big national story in the morning papers this 25th day of October 2005. What a lady she was.

A seamstress by trade, this Alabama native had no clue her courage to stand for her truth would begin a nation’s transformation.

It was almost 50 years ago, December 1, 1955, when Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus in Montgomery for the ride home after a long day of work in a department store. Years later in an interview, she admitted, the last thing on her mind was being “the mother of the civil rights movement.” She had other plans. As an active NAACP member, Parks had to send out notices of the organization’s upcoming elections for officers; she also had to prepare to host a teenage leadership workshop that weekend.

Then, after a white man had entered the bus and wanted to sit in the middle section, bus driver James Blake approached Parks, and wondered, “Are you going to move?”

“No, I’m not,” stated the woman who went on to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“Then I will have to call the police and have you arrested,” Blake warned. “You may do that,” was Parks short, but determined reply.

We know the rest of the story. Parks’ strength to stand up to injustice led to Martin Luther King getting involved which led to the civil rights’ movement exploding throughout our land.

What can we learn from this incredible woman who was born Rosa Louis McCauley before marrying barber Raymond Parks in 1932?

Many things for sure. But one certainly stands out. We hear it all the time, but often lack the courage to implement it: stand, or in this case, sit, for your truth.

This wasn’t the first time Parks had bristled at the terrible treatment of herself and other African Americans. “My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest,” she would say years later. “I did a lot of walking in Montgomery.”