December 1, 1955.

PEOPLE ALWAYS SAY THAT I DIDN'T give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. 1 was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day ... No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in," Rosa Parks said in her autobiography My Story (Puffin Books [reprint], January 1999).

Black history is full of heroes, perhaps none more universally admired than Mrs. Parks. Our history, as well as our nation's, is also full of small myths and misperceptions. As she acknowledged, some people think she was either just tired or already in league with agitators to become a test case. Neither was true, she has said clearly, though she was already an activist predisposed and trained to act on her values. Her death gives us a splendid opportunity to revisit the case and reeducate ourselves.

I have always related to the fact that Mrs. Parks was a department-store seamstress, just as my own mother had been. To me, it means this woman could have been any body's mama, who just decided that today was the day to take a stand, as I often saw my mother and countless other black women do when the situation, big or small, called for it.

I met Mrs. Parks once after her autobiography first came out in 1992, and she still exuded a calm determination, wrapped in a sweet demeanor, that made her the right woman at the right time and place. Since Mrs. Parks's death on October 24, 2005, we at BIBR have reviewed literature on her life as we prepared a list of the books about her, not counting all the ones that mention her, for our Web site, www.bibookreview.com. The book I read most closely, Rosa Parks (Penguin Lives, Viking Books, June 2000) by the distinguished historian Douglas Brinkley, underscores many little-known details.

His account makes the rules she broke that day in 1955 seem even more oppressive than memory or myths recall. She wasn't in the front of the bus as we think of it, but in the middle, a kind of militarized zone with a movable "colored" sign. There, when a white person got on, not only was she supposed to move back to the colored-only area, but everyone on her row, four people, had to move, because no one could sit parallel to a white person either.

She and only she refused to budge, tired of the daily negotiation for one's dignity. Just about every black person in Montgomery had heard about it by the time she was released from jail that evening. Fifty years later, nearly everyone in the world remembers it and probably will for all eternity. One woman held fast not for her rights, but for all of ours. It is a constant reminder of something we like to tell our children but hardly ever act upon: Yes, one person can change the world.

As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday this month and Black History Month in February, take some time to read about and really know Mrs. Parks's story.

Angela P. Dodson BIBR Executive Editor