This image was lost some time after publication.

This requires noting: Rosa Parks died yesterday. We have little commentary on the fact, as, except inasmuch as Rosa Parks affected nearly every aspect of the world we live in today — and, of course, she did — she wasn't a New Yorker and she wasn't in media, and these are the things we write about. (Also, we're white, Northern, and we sort of like sitting in the back of MTA buses — it's where the door is.) But there's this: She was — she is, she will always be — a woman who galvanized a movement that changed the country, and we remember always being amazed during Black History Month in elementary school that such a world-historical figure was actually breathing the same air we were. Attention, as Mrs. Loman says, must be paid. Even by us.

Rosa Parks, 92, Founding Symbol of Civil Rights Movement, Dies [NYT]