Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks is being honored in the Capitol today. Her influence and importance on civil rights in the United States cannot be underestimated. Her courage in standing up for what she believed in by refusing to stand up on a bus leaves a legacy that will haunt and inspire Americans for decades to come.
I always remember learning about her during our black history month celebrations in Elementary school. We heard stories of her being too tired to stand on the bus and their being no room in the back of the bus where black folks were supposed to sit.
Of course, if you believe any media I've heard this past week, including quotes from Mrs. Parks herself, most of that wasn't true. She was tired, but not of a long day on her feet. She was tired of injustice. She was tired of being discriminated against because of the color of her skin. So, she sat. And in sitting, she started a movement and inspired, and continunes to inspire men and women to fight for justice.

So today she is being honored. Being honored in the Capitol does have an air of vindication. As Wil Haygood writes in today's washington post:

It seems fitting that she should be celebrated in the nation's capital, where many of the laws that held her back were written, then defeated in a slew of federal legislation won by shrewd civil rights lawyers -- many trained at Howard University's law school -- fighting in the legal trenches of American jurisprudence.

Of course, this honor also has twinges of irony. The current political battles over "judicial activism" the concept of judges usurping the role of legislators by creating their own agenda is a very hot fight. Equal rights came from the courts. Schools were de-segregated because of the Supreme Court's activism. The Federal government stepped in to protect African Americans in places where the local government wouldn't do it. Yet, somehow this is forgotten. One person's "judicial activism" is another's Judicial justice. One person's State's rights can be another's local persecution.
So, whenever you hear cries of government being the "problem", stories and cries of courts over-reaching, remember Rosa Parks. Remember how her stand inspired a nation to begin to question serious wrongs. Don't let the struggle she started end in vain. Local isn't always better. Sometimes, wrongs are just universal.