It's time to tell the truth about Rosa Parks

The Rosa Parks of "liberal" news reporting is always the same, even at the hour of her death: she was a woman who was tired and didn't feel like giving up her seat to a Euro-American on the segregated bus.

But the real Rosa Parks wasn't merely some weary loner. She was a seasoned activist who'd spent twelve years helping lead her local NAACP chapter, and the summer before her protest "Parks had attended a 10-day training session at Tennessee's labor and civil rights organizing school, the Highlander Center, where she'd met an older generation of civil rights activists and discussed the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision banning ''separate but equal'' schools. In other words, Parks didn't come out of nowhere. She didn't single-handedly give birth to the civil rights efforts. Instead, she was part of an existing movement for change at a time when success was far from certain."

Most discussion of Rosa Parks, including that on the CBC news site, focuses on other aspects of her life and almost entirely or completely excludes her activist theory and experience. But that's "burying the lead," as they say--eliminating the key difference between a random act leading to enormous victory (impossible to recreate) and dedicated action (with severe consequences for Parks) as part of a larger career of social justice inside a revolutionary culture.

Listen to champion activist Sister Rosa here, and hear a discussion of her by US Congressman John Conyers here. For a fine list of links on the US HUMAN RIGHTS (quit calling it "civil rights" struggle when we're dealing with--among other things--lynching!) STRUGGLE, go here.