Sitting in Rosa Park's Window Seat

Bus No. 2857

Montgomery Capitol

Bird's eye view of the city

Park's window seat

The unveiling of the 2013 Rosa Parks Forever Stamp commemorates her 100th birthday and the civil rights movement that she helped to spark. The refusal to give up her window seat is also instructive as an early instance of intervention in the urban environment that employs the microcosm to transform the macrocosm.

The staging of Ms. Park's action was not only an act of civil disobedience; it represented a contestation of public space to ensure equity and access for all city residents. This is no coincidence. Montgomery is the capital of Alabama and the county seat of Montgomery County. Any action taken in Montgomery would have reverberations throughout the state and the South.

Ms. Park's act of civil disobedience also signifies a strategy meant to disrupt the ecology of segregation (lack of equity and access) in the public space, both inside and outside the bus. African-American riders had to pay in the front and then board the bus in the back. Once aboard, Black riders had to sit in the back; when crowded, they had to yield their seat to white customers.

Ms. Park's refusal to give up her seat came at the end of her workday as seamstress was not only an act of personal rebellion; it reflected the training she received at the Highlander Folk School (now the Highlander Research and Education Center) in Tennessee. Her "window seat" strategy was intentional, deliberate, and planned in advance.

The 100th anniversary of Rosa Park's birthday ought to be a time not only to reflect on her accomplishment but to commit to sitting in Ms. Park's window seat to affect internal and external change to the urban environment.