Rules and Mediocrity

Rosa Parks, 92, died of natural causes at her home in Detroit, Michigan. For those of us a little light on history, Rosa Parks was a woman, a black woman, who in 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested for not relinquishing her seat on a bus to a white male passenger.

I know, 50 years later it seems hard to believe that this could have happened, but it did. Her arrest lead to a year long strike against the bus system in Montgomery, which eventually caused enough financial pain that the segregation laws on public transportation were lifted. You might remember the young man who instigated this reform, Martin Luther King. And so started the civil rights movement.

It was not all rainbows and puppies for this movement and it didn't happen all at once. Years later this reform would take new spins and one would be branded integration. A young white boy living in Mobile, Alabama would be bused 45 minutes to the 'other side of town' to a predominantly black neighborhood in the name of integration. The bus the boy took would routinely have bricks thrown at it by angry neighborhood folk, angry black neighborhood folk. Those same folk would protest outside the school, daily. They would take their happy black children out of that school and move them to another. Now the young white boy was being bused 45 minutes to the 'other side of town' to a black neighborhood to go to a mostly white school. The boy's other friends who lived in the non-integration bound part of the boy's neighborhood and who went to the local school would feel sorry for him. This was the other side of integration and that white boy was me.

What did I care? I had no idea what integration was, I just thought the bus ride was fun and the new school was huge and in a cool neighborhood with lots of trees. I went to this school for 3 years and loved it. I made great friends, great black friends. They taught me how to dance and introduced me to fun music like the Isley Brothers, Funkadelic and the Ohio Players. My best friend, LaSheri, who lived in the angry black neighborhood, would educate me in the latest fashions, which my mom would then go out and buy for me. My mom drew the line when I asked her for an Afro.

But its what all the groovy kids are doing, MOM!!!

It would be years before I realized I was in the middle of a multi-decade time bomb. Integration did not go smoothly during that time nor the years following. After the fact I heard many horror stories from both sides of the color line. But still I'm glad that in some small way I unwittingly participated in what Rosa Parks started. And I wonder today if she had reliquished her seat on that bus, would history have played out the way it did. Would we have advanced to the place where we are today? Its hard to say but my guess is that it would have taken much longer.

What I admire about Rosa Parks was her ability to stand. She broke the rules because the rules made no sense to her. And really, the only thing to gain from slavishly following rules and blindly conforming to the status quo is a smooth, calculated path to mediocrity.

Rest well Rosa.

Pic: Me with my puppies - Mobile, Alabama 1975

Rosa Parks
Civil Rights