As I listened to the news coverage of Rosa Parks' death, many disparate thoughts occurred to me.

First, I remain in awe of her stand not to surrender her bus seat to a white male passenger. Racial prejudice, hatred and intolerance was strong and pervasive throughout Alabama during the 1960s. Blacks were routinely beaten or murdered for expecting equality under the law. Law enforcement did nothing to protect their rights or their lives. Rosa Parks could have ended up murdered like so many "Freedom Riders" who campaigned for and assisted in Black voter registration. It took courage for her to demand her equal rights.

Second, I admire her quiet determination to live her life normally when she could easily have gone the publicity route and tried to make herself into a media sensation. But even more critically, I admire her persistence and the strength of her convictions, unlike, say the defendent in Roe v. Wade, who in later years caved to pressure from religious fundamentalists to recant her stand. Rosa Parks didn't stand up surrounded by White Supremecists in later years proclaiming that she was all wrong and Blacks are lesser human beings after all and she should never have taken the stand she did.

Third, oddly enough, I wondered who the hell was the white man who demanded that she stand up and let him take her seat. Aside from simply being bad manners, I cannot imagine what kind of jerk would do that. Did he think he was privileged above every Black in the world? Did he think that the existence of an immoral and unfair law made it right for him to do what he did? Does he still wonder what all the hoo-ha is all about because, to him, it was a minor incident even if it did epitomize socially accepted prejudism? Is he or his family or even the white population of Alabama ashamed, or just resentful at the outcome? How many people still don't understand what it was all about, and what it continues to be about in so many other ways today?

It took courage for Rosa Parks to take the stand she did. It took courage for early civil rights leaders to rally behind her example. Some of those civil rights activists, like Martin Luther King, Jr., were murdered. High prices were paid and the civil rights victories were costly in many ways. The civil rights movement forced many Americans who were confident in their religion and morality to confront their own hypocrisy. Sadly, many of them chose not to change their attitudes and behaviors to become better people, but instead chose to hold more tightly to the misguided and perverted ideals they embraced. Those people are still around.