Published the week of 11/6/05

Rosa Parks was unlike any other person I've ever met. It was some years ago, when she was speaking about two of the most important things in her life, children and education.

She was a unique combination of gentle, gracious and resolute. She spoke so well to youngsters. She was full of a quick passion, and a deep optimism that things could and would get better, but only if people used their talents and energies.

A few years ago, she decided to help start a charter public school in Detroit. More than 40 years after refusing to give up her seat on an Alabama bus, she was still working for a better, more just world.

Despite many difficulties in her life, she had no trace of bitterness. There were many death threats on her life, and at the time she lived in the south, these had to be taken seriously. Anyone familiar with what happened in the 1950's and 1960's knows that churches were bombed, young men were lynched and leaders were assassinated.

Parks left Alabama, and ended up in Detroit. For a time she worked in the office of a U.S. Congressman.

She loved talking with children of all races. She shared Dr. Martin Luther King's dreams of an integrated society, where people would learn and work together. She established the Raymond and Rosa Parks Institute for Self Development. ( www.rosaparks.org/pages/program_overview.html ) The institute carries out a variety of programs, focusing on helping young people achieve their potential, and helping them learn to work for a better world.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. She was not the first African American person in Alabama to do this. But she had attended a series of meetings with other civil rights activists, and she was widely regarded in Montgomery as a person of integrity and responsibility. She agreed with other local activists to pursue the case, which led to a 381-day bus boycott.

The boycott ended with a US Supreme Court case ruling that requiring Black people to sit in the back of the bus was unconstitutional.

December 1, 2005, the fiftieth anniversary of Parks' powerful act - is coming up in less than a month. Parks was a leader not just for Black people, for all who believe in dignity, equity and justice.

Thousands, perhaps millions of words have been written in the last week about Mrs. Park's life. I hope that students, schools and other groups working with young people will contact the Raymond and Rosa Parks Institute, and join in their December 1 celebration.