Here's a link to a catchy song which uses the saying "Rosa walked etc".

Rosa Sat - song for Barack Obama

marsh820
January 17, 2009

"Written and performed by Amy Dixon-Kolar (c) 2008 Asharta Music/ASCAP. This was written a few days after November 4, 2008 and was inspired by the quote used as the chorus and the celebrations and photos of this historic day. Photographer Bernie Kleina was kind enough to give permission for me to use his photos of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the murals in the Pilsen area of Chicago."

-snip-

The words of the chorus are:

Rosa walked so Martin could walk.
Martin walked so Barack could run.
Barack ran. He ran and he won
So that all our children could fly.

-snip-

Several other videos have this saying in their title. "Rosa sat so Martin could walk" etc has already been put on sweatshirts, and is being circulated [without the song] through emails.

**

"Rosa sat so Martin could walk" etc. has been credited to various people, especially to rapper Jay-Z {it may be in one of his raps} But it appears that the person who came up with the saying was Cleo Fields, former Louisiana State Senator and U.S. Congressman, who is quoted as saying those words in a press release for the 9th annual State of the Black Union 2008.

Here is the quote:

"Panelists observed that Senator Barack Obama's historic run for the White House didn't come out of thin air. "Rosa Parks sat down so we could stand up. Martin Luther King marched so Jesse Jackson could run. Jesse Jackson ran so Obama could win," said Cleo Fields, former Louisiana State Senator and U.S. Congressman."

http://www.tavistalks.com/pdf/sobu_press_release.pdf

**
A discussion of this quote appears on Quoteland.com -Rosa sat so Martin could walk

See this post:

"Another version of this saying is also credited to Cleo Fields and appears at http://sociologistsforobama.blogspot.com/

Cleo Fields: Putting it all in Perspective
"W. E. B. DuBois started to teach so that Rosa Parks could take a seat. Rosa Parks took a seat so that we could all take a stand. We all took a stand so that Martin Luther King, Jr. could march. Martin Luther King, Jr. marched so that Jesse Jackson could run. Jesse Jackson ran so that Barack Obama could win!"
Cleo Fields at the State of the Black Union February. 23, 2008"
-ontograph


**

Here's another post from that same blog:

"Ontograph--thank you!

What I find fascinating is the way the folk process operated to streamline the quotation,and to add the mythic element ("our children could fly" has always sounded to me like a reference to "The People Could Fly," the title story from a book of African-American folktales by Virgina Hamilton)"
-kmccary