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Front Seat

A note and thought on Mrs. Parks.

Did you get to the viewing? It was cold; the ground was hard; the line moved around 5 blocks in 6 hours – but it was Rosa Parks. If the folks of Montgomery could walk for 381 days, clearly I can walk for half a night!

Besides. If I got out of line because I was tired, I think they would have revoked my revolutionary card. (It's bad enough I can't afford to pay dues.)

It was lovely. Don’t let the non-counting/can't see us all in the dark anyway/television pundits tell you it was 30,000. It was 300,000 if it was three! (It doesn’t take 30,000 people 6 hours to walk no where!)

You know what got me? The size of the  (closed) casket – so small. People make clichéd analogies about the ‘size of the spirit’ versus the ‘size of the body,’ but clearly Mrs. Parks gave the mantra meaning.

What hits home is that after that boycott. After that time. After the riots and the marches. Despite, being a household name, she dropped out of the limelight to get back to the quiet work of continuing the movement. The real work of phone calls, flyering, getting out the vote, supporting good politics and better politicians… she worked for nearly 40 years as staff in the office of her congressman.

Again she made her point. Not every great woman who was arrested for sitting on a bus started a revolution – it was one particular woman who had already won the hearts and badges of the movement by doing the scut work and then refused to give up her seat and started a revolution. Not every great woman who has changed this country lays in honor in the Capitol – it was one particular woman who did her duty and served her country who had a congressman beholden to her enough to put the bill through Congress to make it happen and then she laid in honor in the Capitol.

(i feel a poem comin' on)
go, sistah, go
 

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