Remembering Rosa Parks
TO: The Trinity Community
FR: President Patricia McGuire
RE: Rosa Parks: Remembering Her Legacy
Please take a minute before this week ends to stop and think about
the legacy that Rosa Parks leaves not only for the nation and world,
but for our lives at Trinity. She died last Monday, a true hero
for this nation, an icon of the civil rights movement and the worldwide
struggle for human rights. Her example was all the more compelling
because of the absolute quiet confidence, integrity and faith she
carried with her throughout her life.
I propose that we conduct a special remembrance of her legacy on
December 1 this year—fifty years to the day from the momentous
date when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat
on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white man who demanded that
she do so. I invite suggestions from the Trinity community of the
best way to create a meaningful day of remembrance and new learning
about the meaning of her courageous actions. She was a woman who
truly sparked a revolution—the kind of woman who is an exemplar
of our ideals at Trinity. What can we take from her example? How
can we ensure that the community of Trinity will always remember
what Rosa Parks meant to the cause of justice and freedom for all
people in this nation?
Please send me your ideas, and perhaps we can gather some day in
the next week or two to discuss the concept. I particularly ask
that this year’s student government, clubs and organizations,
who are doing such a great job sponsoring so many programs, might
think of ways to contribute to a December 1 program.
Rita Dove wrote this about Rosa Parks in an article about her in
the June 14, 1999 Time magazine:
“At the end of this millennium (and a particularly noisy
century), it is the modesty of Rosa Parks' example that sustains
us. It is no less than the belief in the power of the individual,
that cornerstone of the American Dream, that she inspires, along
with the hope that all of us—even the least of us—could
be that brave, that serenely human, when crunch time comes.”
Please think about this and ways we can remember Rosa Parks.
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