Bussed…
The ghost of Rosa Parks, who died yesterday, when asked to give up its seat to a white man, refused, provoking grumblings in the white cracker Baptist and Methodist sections of heaven. “I didn’t come all this way to be disrespected,” said the shadow of the civil rights icon’s former self. “Besides, I own this give-up-your-seat issue, and I’m not letting go ‘vit for nobody.”
Hanging onto your seat is important, explained Parks’ ghost, not because a bus seat is worth anything in itself, but because seats of this type inspire Americans to fight for justice, whereas beatings, killings, torture and assault seem to get them either too excited or too bored to do anything but play with themselves.
“I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP,” Mrs. Parks recalled of her earlier efforts,, “but we did not get the publicity. There were cases of flogging, peonage, murder, and rape. We didn’t seem to have too many successes.”
It wasn’t until 1955, when she was arrested for refusing her seat in the “colored section” of a crowded bus to a white man in Montgomery Alabama, that Americans were galvanized to fight for civil rights.
Today, however, Parks volunteered to ride in the back of the hearse, following her stay in the rotunda. “No indignity in that,” explained her shade. “Sooner or later everybody rides in back.”