[Mb-civic] WORTH A LOOK: The mythology of Rosa Parks - Ellen Goodman - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

The mythology of Rosa Parks

By Ellen Goodman  |  October 28, 2005

ATLANTA
IT IS REMARKABLE how often the legend survives the legendary figure. So 
it is with Rosa Parks.

The mythology describes the woman who died Monday at 92 as a ''humble 
seamstress." The textbooks pay homage to a ''simple woman" with tired 
feet whose refusal to give up her seat on the bus to a white man half a 
century ago sparked a movement. The eulogies cast her as the ''mother of 
the civil rights movement," as if it were an unplanned parenthood.

But the obituaries also suggest another side to her story. The ''humble 
seamstress" was a civil rights activist long before that fateful bus 
ride. The ''simple woman," secretary of her NAACP chapter, attended a 
leadership conference the summer before her act of civil disobedience. 
As for those tired feet? Parks herself wrote, ''The only tired I was, 
was tired of giving in."

Is it possible we prefer our heroes to be humble? Or is it just our 
heroines? In her lifetime, Rosa Parks was often left off the dais of 
civil rights ''leaders." In her death, she is lauded more as icon than 
as leader.

Al Sharpton, of all the un-humble politicians, praised Rosa Parks as 
someone who ''changed American life, having never held public office, 
having no political ambition, just her quiet dignity and courage." Is 
this how we praise women? As unambitious, accidental heroines?

The subject of women and leadership is in the air, not just on the air. 
I heard of Parks's death here at a gathering of the Atlanta Women's 
Foundation, which is partnering with the White House in a project to 
encourage women to fill leadership roles, especially along the political 
pipeline.

Two decades ago, the late Elizabeth Janeway, an intellectual doyenne of 
the women's movement, fantasized the first woman president. She would be 
a vice president chosen to ''balance" the ticket, a conservative 
Republican who ascends to the Oval Office denying any connection to 
feminism.

Today, television producers still must fantasize a ''Commander in 
Chief." Mackenzie Allen is also an accidental president, an independent 
who stood up for women by refusing to stand down from office. If, at 
times, the show is more about working motherhood than the presidency -- 
Lynette of ''Desperate Housewives" meets Mackenzie of White 
Househusbands -- is this the only place to ''see" a woman president?

Last weekend, Condoleezza Rice was in her hometown of Birmingham, Ala., 
marking another civil rights event -- the church bombing that killed 
four girls, including one of her friends. Rice may insist she is not 
running for office, but others saw that weekend as a screen test. As 
Rice herself said repeatedly: ''I can think of so many cases where 
things that seemed impossible one day seemed inevitable a bit later."

Meanwhile, in New York, Hillary Clinton says she is running for nothing 
but reelection to the Senate against the hapless candidacy of Jeanine 
Pirro. An entire library of books attack Hillary and then accuse her of 
being a polarizing figure. Nevertheless, every poll shows her as the 
front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president.

Both Hillary and Condi have done something new. They've passed the 
''competence test," a bar set much higher for women. There are few, fans 
or foes, who deny that the senator and the secretary of state are 
qualified to run for the highest office. But what about the other test? 
How does the political imperative to be ambitious gel with the cultural 
imperative to be ''unassuming"? Does it put a brake on women who would 
be leaders?

Sally Weaver, the CEO of the Atlanta Women's Foundation, says we have to 
get over the ''deficit model" of leadership, a routine focus on what is 
missing in a woman. We need instead to encourage risk-taking.

Indeed, sometimes women are better at providing support for each other's 
disappointments than ambitions, better at offering comfort than at 
urging risk. There is something in the culture that still tells women to 
wait until they are asked -- to run, to lead. Something that praises us 
more for ''quiet dignity" than for dangerous acts of courage.

So we come back to Rosa Parks. ''Rosa Parks was not an accidental 
heroine," says Marie Wilson, head of the White House Project. In her 
time and place, Parks, too, was a polarizing figure. She was a leader 
whose beliefs were honed in a moral framework and whose courage was 
rooted in a political support system.

Rosa Parks was ''unassuming" -- except that she rejected all the 
assumptions about her place in the world. Rosa Parks was a ''simple 
woman" -- except for a mind made up and fed up. She was ''quiet" -- 
except, of course, for one thing. Her willingness to say ''no" changed 
the world.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/28/the_mythology_of_rosa_parks/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20051028/a63d83d2/attachment.htm