It could be quite startling, and maybe even a little embarrassing, to look into the gentle face of history, then hear her offer coffee and cookies.
She stood there, the black and gray image in so many newspapers and history texts, given flesh. A part of the shock of recognition was that, in person, she stood just as small as the rest of us.
As a practical matter, her job of more than 20 years was to greet visitors to the offices of a Detroit congressman, to solve problems for them when she could, sometimes just to offer them refreshment.
But her true role, one given her for a lifetime by a prosaic act at the dawn of the modern civil rights movement, was to be a living icon:…