Words Like Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks' decision: to stay seated when asked to stand. Physically this is an anti-action, but what a black person staying seated on a bus in 1950s Alabama meant when a white person wanted the seat ended up being a mighty, cataclysmic act. You don’t need me to tell you the story—you’ve read it already. If you’re American, you know it already.

Or at least know part of the story. The adjectives that always describe her are words like “quiet” and “humble.” Perhaps she was quiet and humble, but that puts heavy limits on how we picture her. By extension we then envision her as old and tired, and we assume that she stayed seated because her feet were sore: why else would a quiet, humble, old, tired seamstress stay seated when asked to move?

We never hear of who she was outside of this singular image. As she put it herself, she wasn’t that old and she wasn’t that tired, at least physically. She was just tired mentally of being treated as something less than she was. We all have our limits, and she hit hers 50 years ago on a bus.

So she didn’t give up her seat, so she was arrested, and so began an American upheaval: boycotts, sit-ins, nonviolent protest against sometimes-violent response, and forced recognition that race relations in American had to be confronted, under the leadership of Martin Luther King and so many others. All from one person staying seated. You’ll never see a Rosa Parks movie because the climax of the story is physically so underwhelming. In fact, it’s almost difficult for those of us who never lived with or were directly affected by Jim Crow to feel this completely, what not standing means fully.

This is why she’s one of my heroes. I don’t use that term loosely—this isn’t me being a politician (because admiring Rosa Parks isn’t particularly original or striking). I actually don’t have many heroes. There are lots of heroic people I’ve encountered and that have influenced me, but few that I understand as and treat as heroes—that combination of reverence, excitement, and comfort that they bring to those that adore them.

It’s how she became famous that makes her heroic to me. She not only confronted a frightening inhumanity in the face, but she did it alone, and she did it without fanfare or in the quest for attention. If this act had been planned, or if there was a group march off of the bus, things might have turned out the same, but maybe they wouldn’t have. The fact that this one person acted from her soul alone, that it was unstaged, that it was truly derived without pretense gave the act its inspired spark to start the Civil Rights revolution. The “civil” in Civil Rights refers to people as citizens, but her civility in the face of brutishness makes me think there’s dual meaning there.

I want to write words that are like Rosa Parks. I want to read words that are like Rosa Parks. I want to live in a time when words, even if spoken quietly or written in humble letters, are communicated freely and received openly.

Is it fair to say that words mean less than they once did? I dislike romanticizing the past at the expense of a modern present (writers of blogs shouldn’t be bashing technology), but I think of a time when words were available in far fewer and infinitely slower media. In the 1800s, there were books for those who could afford them, newspapers and broadsides, plays, and conversation—and a lot of quiet time in between to consider what was said. We now have so many words fighting for our attention that it’s a miracle that we can still function. I love our open access to the words of millions of people everywhere we go—blogs and myriad other venues for publishing what we write allow for free communication and open reception.
But I hate how easily they are written.

With a deluge of words comes a watering down of what they carry. Language is as spiritual an entity as any in my life. With words we are both one with each other and one with ourselves. This ability we have is so easy to take for granted, which is so sad. You can’t revere and benefit fully from that which you take for granted. If we all knew language in so pure a way, its message and meaning would be perpetually powerful, regardless of whom was communicating: seamstresses should be world changers just as much as presidents.

But now there are simply too many words. They are all over us at all hours of the day, and we have no escape. Before we can take the time with some words, new words are coming at us. Loud words muffle soft ones, and boisterous trumps thoughtful every time. The TV personalities and talk radio stars and public figures in our lives rarely express the best words. They are just the best at being heard.

And as listeners, we continue to be drawn to the words that force themselves upon us rather than those we have to find. Words we equate with dignity and civility are invisible or silent in a shouting match. We should be brave enough as listeners to not rely on those communicating to give us the best words, but to go out ourselves and seek them out. We so rarely do.
How can we know who we are if we can’t hear each other in our most thoughtful, defining moments? When it’s our turn to look injustice in the face and make a stand, will anyone be able to hear us? Will anyone know what we did?

This was originally published in Some Other Magazine.