Rosa Parks, R.I.P.

Rosa Parks, whose refusal to sit in the back of the bus changed history, has died at her residence in Detroit.

Mrs. Parks, who was 92, had genuine courage. La Shawn Barber paid tribute in a moving column:

"Parks and her husband Raymond didn't have children, as far as I can tell from news accounts of her life. In a way, I suppose those she inspired to stand up to injustice were her offspring. Once people understand the power they have in a free country, the moral authority to demand justice, watch out. I once heard this line from a movie: 'Change the way people think, and things will never be the same.'

"Whatever her reasons that fateful day, I'm glad she decided to stay in her seat."

Joe Sobran, some of whose opinions make me queasy, is not a writer I often quote. However, a snippet from his piece on true courage and feigned courage, posted elsewhere, speaks to the occasion:

"[Bill] Clinton is a perfect specimen of bogus courage -- the sort of guy who says things that are now safe and even fashionable with an air of jut-jawed determination that suggests he would have said them when they were not only unfashionable, but dangerous to espouse. In fact he has even told us that when he was nine years old, he and his little friends, in solidarity with Rosa Parks, rode in the backs of buses in Arkansas! Clinton is only a parody of many other liberals who want us to believe that their willingness to conform to today's fashions is proof that they would have had the courage to defy yesterday's fashions. Somehow I find it hard to believe that today's coward would have been yesterday's hero, if only he'd had the chance. More likely he would have been, like most people, a timid conformist in any circumstances."