Sitting Down On the Job

Rosa Parks is dead at 92.

The common Rosa Parks narrative is that one day in Montgomery, Alabama, this black woman who’d never raised a fuss in her life was tired after working all day and decided, right then and there, to refuse to give up her seat to a white guy in violation of the transit rules. This out-of-the-blue act of civil disobedience sparked a movement that culminated in the death of Jim Crow, at least in the Montgomery bus system.

There’s one problem with the popular narrative. It’s wrong. Not the part about her gutsy refusal to comply with a racist directive, or that her act was one of the linchpins of the civil rights movement – those things are true, of course. But the perception that Ms. Parks acted spontaneously is not only wrong, it fails to accord Ms. Parks all the credit she is due for her role in the Montgomery bus boycott and the change it effected.

On December 1, 1955, when Ms. Parks declined to give up her seat to a white man, she was already the secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP. The summer before her arrest, Parks had attended the Highlander Folk School, an education and training center involved in labor issues and desegregation. Ms. Parks was already actively working in the civil rights movement when she took her famous stand.

Somehow it’s more gratifying to perceive the process of social change as a single, dramatic, whizbang kind of moment. It’s easy to forget that progress is more often the result of constant, inconspicuous, taxing work. Rosa Parks did that kind of work before she had her celebrated moment of resistance.

Paul Rogat Loeb has written about the flaws in the popular Rosa Parks narrative:

Parks didn't make a spur - of - the - moment decision. Rosa Parks didn't single - handedly give birth to the civil rights efforts, but she was part of an existing movement for change, at a time when success was far from certain. This in no way diminishes the power and historical importance of her refusal to give up her seat. But it does remind us that this tremendously consequential act might never have taken place without all the humble and frustrating work that she and others did earlier on. And that her initial step of getting involved was just as courageous and critical as her choice on the bus that all of us have heard about.

Loeb goes on to argue that these legends we generate for our heroes may impede more than they inspire, because they create an impossibly high standard. Such ideas suggest that we don’t make a difference unless we act with such larger-than-life boldness, in a manner that is far beyond the ken of an ordinary person.

But really, the essence of a dramatic flourish is a culmination of quieter, but no less significant, events that lay the ground for the peak. In this way, each small actor contributes to the cataclysm of change, often in ways they don’t know.

In her 1995 book, Quiet Strength, Parks wrote, "Four decades later I am still uncomfortable with the credit given to me for starting the bus boycott. I would like [people] to know I was not the only person involved. I was just one of many who fought for freedom."