Remembering Rosa Parks

It was 58 years ago today Dec. 1, 1955 on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama that Rosa Parks, an NAACP member, bravely refused to move to the back of the bus. She refused to allow a white man to have her seat on the bus.

We often imagine that one individual citizen of the United States, cannot make a difference. We give up before even trying believing that without large sums of money and powerful political backing it is an impossibility for our simple effort to succeed.

Thankfully we have the remarkable example of Rosa Parks. She reminds us of the power one person has to make a stand against social injustice. Her single act of determination to stand up, or in this case to stay sitting down, in the face of a  violent, even murderous, and intimidating society of racism could and did make a change. We must remember that this was no ordinary act of protest. The society of racism in Montgomery, Alabama was a formidable foe. They were willing and ready to  murder innocent people to maintain white power and privilege, where blacks are conveniently relegated into a state of dehumanization.

Her arrest report can be found here.