A Call to Action, in Honoring Rosa Parks

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ED GORDON, host:

Last week, President Bush signed a bill into law that gives Capitol architects two years to erect a statue of Rosa Parks. The statue will stand in the Capitol's Statuary Hall, where many of America's greatest heroes are honored. Commentator John McCann says while moralizing Parks in stone or bronze is a nice gesture, but he says the best way for African-Americans to pay tribute to civil rights leaders is by taking action.

JOHN McCANN:

If I was smart, I'd have figured out a way to get naming rights for every boulevard, avenue, side street and cul-de-sac tacked to America's most famous civil rights leaders. I live right off of the Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway in Durham, North Carolina, and just recently, a quadruple homicide took place right off that road. Police believe it was drug related.

Now that's not what you call honoring Dr. King. The only connection is what an assassin's bullet did to him, which means there's no inherent power in the symbolism evoked by asphalt arteries and tall monuments and granite markers erected to pay homage to our fallen heroes and sheroes. They're nice gestures and all, but they don't stop us from acting stupid, don't stop black people from killing each other and getting high and all that mess.

So I can't say I'm all that thrilled about Rosa Parks getting honored in Washington, DC, with a statue of her likeness at the Capitol's Statuary Hall. I'm not hating on Rosa Parks, not doing like Cedric the Entertainer's character Eddie in the "Barbershop" movie who says something like, `Rosa Parks wasn't that special, just tired.' We know better than that, don't we? Ms. Parks doing something as simple as remaining seated on a bus seat is why a whole bunch of black folks have since been able to sit their butts in chairs in some of the finest universities in America, sit inside boardrooms, the head of their business. You feel me? But our memories are short. We forget that the trailblazers did so much for us. And we lose focus. We get sidetracked. The end result: stuff like those four young men getting murdered not far from where I live on (clears throat) Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway.

A statue does not a legacy make. No constructed memorial of any sort do we honor somebody like Rosa Parks. But let me tell you what can: Me treating my wife like a queen even when she gets on my last nerve and won't let me have my way. Or you being the father you didn't have. And you, sister, keeping those legs closed to stop the spread of baby daddies. Young man, young lady, it's you going to school and sitting in the front of the class and letting Ray Ray and them hang out in the back, unless you're going to be the one making sure they're not goofing off. See, that's how we honor Rosa Parks.

I'm thinking about a situation near Atlanta in Clayton County, Georgia, and a street called Tara Boulevard, named after the plantation home in the movie "Gone with the Wind." There's been a push to rename Tara Boulevard after Rosa Parks, and all it's done is create racial drama, as you can imagine. And it's unnecessary, because what good is changing the name of a road if the hearts of the people who live on the road have remained the same? To that end, if the government is as racist as many black people claim it is, what's the good in so-called handkerchief-headed politicians agreeing to put up statues of black pioneers? No disrespect, but man, don't worship symbols of trailblazers. Blaze your own trail. That's why Rosa Parks stayed put.

GORDON: John McCann is a columnist for the Herald-Sun newspaper in Durham, North Carolina.

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