"I want everyone to remember me as a person who wanted to be free."

Rosa Parks is dead at 92.

Only several years ago, I learned that the popular myth I had learned in school about the incident on the bus was hooey. She wasn't a grandmotherly old lady who wouldn't rise to give up her seat because her feet hurt. She wasn't an accidental hero in a housecoat and sensible shoes.

She was only 40 years old then. She was an activist. She had been thrown off that bus before by the same driver who called the police on her that day.

So, she wasn't trying to spare her bunions. She was a fucking radical. But because she was prim looking, and female, she was the perfect catalyst for the protest that changed this country for the better forever.