We know instinctively that not everything we come to believe as history is true. But we want it to be.
We want to believe that a timid seamstress sat down on a city bus in December, 1955 and refused to give up her seat to a white man because she was just too tired.
We want to believe that she was a solitary heroine who single-handedly desegregated public transportation in Montgomery, Ala., overnight.
And we want to believe that she spent the rest of her days comfortably, secure in the knowledge that her meek, nonviolent approach to injustice made all the difference.
Except, as is too often the case with revisionist history, we would be wrong.
