Why I Love America

Rosa Parks, the woman who sparked massive civil rights protests by her simple act of breaking the law by sitting in the front of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, has passed away, and will lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol.

To lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol is arguably the greatest honor this country can bestow. It is a greater honor than any of the ribbons or medals the country awards by virtue of how rarely it is bestowed. The last person to lie at the capitol was Ronald Reagan, and even most U.S. Presidents are never so honored by their country.

The importance of the honor is also magnified by the fact that it can only be bestowed after one's death, when the importance of one's actions have had time to become apparent (usually), and there is little political advantage to be gained for the honoree.

So back to the title of this article: Why I Love America.

Rosa Parks was, by all accounts, a completely ordinary woman. She was not a politician, general, or a great leader. She was not wealthy or from a noble family.

But fifty years ago, she did something both unremarkable yet amazing: she refused to sit in the back of a city bus, where local law and custom demanded that people with dark skin sit. As a result, she was arrested, and as a result of that, black people throughout the city refused to ride the bus.

It was the beginning of the civil rights movement in America, which led to some of the most profound legal and social changes in our country's history. To be fair, she had been consciously chosen for this role by leaders in the civil rights movement, who felt she would be a suitable symbol for their cause. But chosen or not, she was the pebble which kicked off a landslide.

I was not born at the time, and my parents were still children. But what strikes me about the Rosa Parks story is not the significance of it, but the undeniable pettiness of it. Sitting in the front of the bus is hardly a great privilege or honor, but by denying it to black people, the city of Montgomery was determined to show black people that they were somehow less worthy than white people. Rosa Parks did nothing more--or less--than seize the basic human dignity that we now view as our birthright.

And in America, a completely ordinary person can do an extraordinary thing, and our nation will honor her on the same level as our greatest leaders.