Mike Cox Rosa Parks died three Mondays ago. A week earlier, Vivian Malone, the first black woman to attend the University of Alabama, also passed away. When they were in the national news, the South seemed to be embroiled in a complicated controversy. At least it appeared that way back then.

That’s how bigotry works. Complicate the issue, demonize the opponent, remove the humanness. It’s easy to hate someone different from you if you believe them to be a threat to your way of life and not deserving of simple liberty.

I was ambivalent for several years as the Civil Rights Movement raged around me. I grew up in a segregated South and didn’t see any reason for things to change. The black people I saw seemed like they were doing okay; I didn’t see what caused their anger.

Then I met Ken Taylor. He and I went to high school together. He was intelligent, funny, and dedicated to his schoolwork. He was also black; among a small group of African Americans chosen to integrate Tuscaloosa High in the mid–60s.

Ken and I were never close friends, and I haven’t seen him since we graduated. I’m pretty sure he’s a lot more successful than I am. What he did for me was put a human face on all those “colored people” I had been hearing about. The stereotypes fell away the first time I had a conversation with him.

He made the entire movement a simple case of human dignity. How can a system be right when a person like Ken isn’t treated with every measure of simple respect afforded every white person just by being born?

And that is what Vivian Malone and especially Rosa Parks did. They quietly, and with great force, put a human face on the questions being asked in that era. When a middle aged woman is put in jail for refusing to give up her seat on a bus, something is wrong. And America realized it at that time.

Today, race is still a polarizing issue. As long as opportunists on both sides continue to use it for personal gain and power, we will continue to have issues. And as long as people try to dwell on our differences, we will find someone to distrust. Hate is easy to generate.

But so is understanding and respect. As long as someone can cut through the stereotypes and reveal the humanness inside, bigotry is harder to generate. The movement to erase racial barriers began because no one could explain why a quiet, dignified woman could be forced to give up her seat on a bus because of her skin color. It solidified for me because I couldn’t accept stereotypes about a boy I went to school with.

Whether we talk about religious, racial, sexual, regional, or political differences, stereotypes can be blasted away by providing the face of simple human dignity. The entire Civil Rights movement began because one white man felt Rosa Parks was less human than he, and he deserved her bus seat. I wonder where that guy is today?