Thank You, Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks died last night at age 92. It was almost 50 years ago when Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. In doing so, she provided a dignified but determined face to the civil rights movement. The resulting 381-day bus boycott by Montgomery's black community helped thrust Martin Luther King, Jr. into the national spotlight.

There are those who will venerate Parks in a manner suggesting her struggle is a part of history. Part of celebrating her life will be dismissing flaccid assertions that racism is merely a "legacy" issue, as Bush II stated during his post-Katrina photo-op in New Orleans' Jackson Square.