Editorial for November 3, 2005
By Jim White
In 1955, who could ever have imagined that a “colored” lady who refused to give up her seat on a bus would one day lie in state in the rotunda of the nation's capitol.
Most whites in that era of our history were willing to close their eyes to racial injustice. Most in Virginia were even resentful that the year before, the United States Supreme Court had ruled that education inequality had to be corrected. They didn't want anybody to rock the bus. But Rosa sure did.
Fifty years ago, when African Americans, who comprised most of the riders, boarded a city bus in the South they were required by Jim Crow laws to step onto the bus using the front door in order to deposit their fare beside the driver. Then they had to exit and board the bus again using the rear door. The first four rows of seats were reserved for whites even if no whites were riding. Behind these seats was a section that African Americans could use only if there was no white demand. However, if just one white passenger needed a seat in this section, all the blacks in that section had to move.
On Dec. 1, as she was riding home from her job as a seamstress at a department store, Rosa and three others sat in the center section when a white man boarded the bus and needed a seat. The other three blacks moved dutifully to the back of the bus, but Rosa refused even when the driver threatened to call the police.
Some sources reported that she was so tired from her day's labor that she just couldn't bring herself to move. But, in her autobiography, My Story, Rosa said, “People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired that I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
She said she had no idea that she was starting a national movement, but that people joined in because they were tired, too.
It is fitting that all Americans should honor Rosa Parks. Every movement has its focal person who becomes its symbolic spear point. Others made similar gestures and others suffered just as humiliating an affront. But it was the right time and place. She was surrounded by the right spokesmen and Rosa was the right person to rock the bus. We all celebrate that a great wrong was eventually remedied.
As I see it, there is another reason to celebrate, although admittedly the celebration is prompted by some guilt. A little guilt can be a good thing. The tribute paid Rosa Parks is also an admission that we white folks who let that travesty continue so long were wrong. Ours was the powerful position. It was the legal (but not the constitutional) position. It was the traditional position. It was the comfortable (for whites) position, but it was morally wrong. We Christians should have seen more clearly than we did. We should have been able (and willing) to slip into the skins of other people and feel what life is like for them. We should have championed their cause. But we didn't.
Some will argue that the times were different then. True. But people were not. Humiliation tasted no differently 50 years ago than it does today. We should have tasted the bitterness of their lives.
The real issue is not whether we were wrong, but whether we have repented. In 1995, Southern Baptists apologized for our pro-slavery position. That was an appropriate and a courageous (if belated) thing to do. But saying “I'm sorry” is not the same as repentance. Repentance, as any evangelical preacher can tell you, means no longer doing the same thing. It means turning around. It means getting off the wrong road and getting on the right road.
We still have challenges before us that require seeing through eyes of equality. It is always tempting to accept what is rather than push for what should be. What issues do the poor face today? What is it like being a ghetto African American? Can we put ourselves in their skins?
We have expressed our determination to win a million people to Jesus Christ and see them baptized this year. By all means, let's support this. It will mean the difference between heaven and hell for a million people!
But let us not forget that justice for the poor and powerless is also part of the gospel. In fact, how can we say that we love people and not be moved by their sufferings? I pray that the memory of Rosa Parks will cause me not only to honor the courage of a middle-aged black lady who was so tired of being humiliated that she was willing to rock the bus, but that it will inspire me to look for the hurts of people around me and become a bus-rocker myself.
Jim White is editor of the Religious Herald.