One Person Can Make a Difference
Remembering Rosa Parks

Yesterday I watched some of Rosa Parks funeral and was overwhelmed by memories. As a historian, I know it is impossible to know what would happen if one person or event is deleted from the human experience. Still, it is fun to conjecture. How might the world be different if Rosa Parks had not been arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man? For example, would anyone know who Martin Luther King was, if he had not been coerced into leading the boycott movement?

My own life was dramatically changed by her bold action. When it happened, I had just turned 10 and was living in an all-white suburb of Atlanta. The year before I had heard some talk of the Brown decision, but as a child, I didn’t really understand what it meant. I was blissfully unaware of the daily humiliations African Americans suffered, until my uncle lost his job with the Montgomery Bus Company as a result of the bus boycott.

My entire extended family was suddenly right in the middle of the event. One impact was that my cousin came to live with us while his Dad was unemployed. As a result of our taking him to church three times a week, he found a faith that sustained him and is now a bishop in the United Methodist Church.

For me, the boycott brought segregation from the periphery of my consciousness to the center. I was a curious and religious child. I wanted to know why black customers had to sit at the back of the bus. My extended family (six aunts and uncles) had many conflicting answers, but nothing I heard could make me understand how avowed Christians could do such a thing to another human being. As I have told my students in my African American history classes, I still haven’t found a good answer.

Looking for the answer led me often to focus on African Americans, both in high school and college readings and research papers. After a former professor ran into me in a grocery store and convinced to to enter grad school in history, there was no doubt my major area of study would be African American history. Since that time I’ve written three books and a children’s book on the subject. It still pains me that so few young people today have a clue about the horrific treatment of African Americans during my lifetime--as well as centuries ago.

Would I have dedicated my life trying to understand why whites tried so hard to hold down their black neighbors and how African Americans responded without the action of Rosa Parks?

I don’t know.