When studying the CLI about Martin Luther King, it reminded me of another important person related to America's civil rights revolution: Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks was born 1913 and worked as a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama. Here’s her amazing story:
In Montgomery the segregation laws were rather complex: blacks were required to pay their fare to the driver, then get off and reboard through the back door. Sometimes the bus would drive off before the paid-up customers made it to the back entrance. If the "white" section was full and another white customer entered, blacks were required to give up their seats and move farther to the back; a black person was not even allowed to sit across the aisle from whites. These humiliations were compounded by the fact that two-thirds of the bus riders in Montgomery were blacks.
One day in 1955, Rosa Parks boarded the bus and sat down in the first row of the “Coloured Section”. As the bus became crowded, she was ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger but she refused to do so and remained seated, not because she was tired or because she wanted to rebell against the law - just because of the simple fact that she was tired of giving up. For this action, she got arrested a few days later. Immediately the black population of Montgomery began to protest against the segregation laws and distributed flyers in which they asked others, who were dissatisfied with the system, to not use the buses on the following Monday. And although it was raining heavily that they, every black citizen either walked or took a taxi in order to support Rosa Parks.
After Rosa Parks was sentenced to pay a penalty, the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed. The members elected as their president a relative newcomer to Montgomery, the young Reverent Martin Luther King Jr... and I am sure all of you know how the story goes on ..
Today, Rosa Parks is still a persistent symbol of human dignity in the face of brutal authority.
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