It semed fitting to me, as a Pagan, one who believes that Samhain (halloween) is sacred both to the goddess and the god, as well as to the dead, that Rosa Parks would on that day become the first woman ever to lay in state at the Capitol. It seemed fitting. Not that Parks was a pagan, so far as I know she was a Baptist, a Christian. But her simple act of defiance crossed all racial and cultural lines, as far as I'm concerned.
Her death was not so much a mourning as it was a celebration of the spirit of mankind, and of the rights of the oppressed to arise from the chains of the shackles from which they had only been physically freed. The saddest thing about the event, in fact, was the timing. Had she lived just another couple of months, she would have seen the fiftieth anniversary of her refusal to arise from her seat on that Montgomery Alabama bus, as the law then required, to give that seat to a white man.
And who exactly was this white man? To be honest, I don't have a clue, in fact I have never seen his name in print or heard it utterred.I don't even know for certain if he is still alive or not. Maybe this is all part of the public record, maybe it is not. Maybe a Google seach would reveal his identity. There is nothing, however, that could reveal how stupid he must have felt in the aftemath of all this. I mean, I would be tempted to ask him, just who in the fuck do you think, or did you think, you are and/or were? What made you think that anybody, of any race, was obliged to get up out of their seats for your sorry ass?
And, of course, what made him think that was the culture of the times and the place. Had I been him, had I been the one on that bus, I would like to think that I would have acted quite differently, that I would not have demanded the lady arise from a hard days work at the seamstress shop where she work, so that I migth sit down. In fact, I would like to think that had I gotten on the bus before her, and had I all ready taken that seat, I would have offerred it to her when I saw her getting on the bus.
But more than likely, I would not have acted any differently. I probably would have done the exact same thing. Because that was just the pervading culture of the day and time.
Or was it? Was it really that ingrained? I mean, where did that picture come from, the one you see on the news here the last few days, Rosa Parks sitting on the bus, a white man sitting behind her? Was that him, or somebody else? A police interrogator? Who took the picture, and why?
Was it all set up? Did the white man, the one who complained about this woman who brazenly refused to give up the seat to him, actually in reality go along with all this? Was he a willing particiapant in some strange semi-rehearsed skit of sorts that was played out by some design on a national stage known as the national news? Is this why we never hear his name mentioned?
Rosa Parks, after all, was a member of the NAACP, and sat on a civil rights board in Montgomery. She was no stranger, therefore, to activism, in fact she may have been very familiar with it.
However, the story just does not seem to retain it's magic when related in the manner of a pre-arranged set-up, with camera and reporters at the ready. And the story as told is a magical one, sort of like the story of Miss jane Pittman, the aged, ancient black woman who, needing a drink of water from a public fountain on a hot, humid day, brazenly walked up to the one that was clearly marked-
WHITE ONLY
and drank. A simple act of defiance that in it's own right raised awareness and helped to change the world.
In a way, it doesn't really matter, whether the event was a staged one, or whether it was a naturally occurring part of the imutable fabric of history. The intent, and the result, is the important thing. And whatever the answer might be, it would not lessen her place in hisotry, and the appropriateness of her place in state at the nations capitol.
On the other hand, if it was a naturally occurring event, as I prefer to think that it was, it makes it seem all the more magical. Yet all the more human.
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