December 6, 2005

LETTERS2theEDITOR

Remembering Rosa Parks and an unknown white man

Editor,
In the midst of our daily concerns, we gave pause to honor one humble life, that of a person who did nothing spectacular. But what she did, in a simple act of dignity, by refusing to go to the back of a bus, resulted in the pause of a nation on the day her life was remembered with her body lying in state in our nation’s capital.

We do not think of him so, but for the act of a man who demanded that another human being give up her seat in deference to him because he was marked with a skin color different from hers, there could not have been, and would not have been, Rosa Parks’ reaction.

So, repulsive as it may seen, let us honor that unknown white man and what he did on the day Rosa refused to go to the back of a bus, for he sparked change equally with Rosa Parks.

You may have heard it said that “God becomes as we are, that we might become as he is.” That being so, no member of a cast in any drama can be ignored and left out in a play. If not for the betrayal of a Judas, would there be a remembered Jesus?

This may seem a strange declaration, but in a near trivial incident in the life of one who defiantly refused to give way to the arrogance of another, he deserves equally to be remembered, however reluctant it may be to some of us.

A pebble dropped in a pool, no matter how small that pebble, creates a circle that spreads like the Civil Rights movement. Without the action of that unremembered, well forgotten we think, white man, there could not have been an opposite, historically engraved, reaction on the part of Rosa Parks.

What the eulogy of hers should teach is that unlike a play by a human playwright, in which the ending is cast, we are engaged in a grand play that is open-ended, the outcome of which we determine.

For weal or woe.

So, as we approach another Christmas season, let us call to one another not “Peace on Earth, good will to men,” but rather “Peace on Earth to men of good will.”

Vern Hansen
Budd Avenue

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