Rosa Parks made her mark on American history as the mother of the civil rights movement. The sweet middle-aged seamstress and secretary at the local NAACP mobilized the civil rights movement and took a stand by refusing to stand up.
On a December evening in 1955, Parks stubbornly remained in her seat in the designated “colored” section of a bus instead of yielding it to a white man, as Montgomery, Ala., laws required when the “whites only” section was full.
Ed Board encourages students to pause for a moment and consider the contributions she has made to modern American society. Parks’ actions created a ripple affect. Her solitary act of civil disobedience caused a community in Montgomery to organize and boycott the segregated bus system for a total of 381 days.
Parks is the perfect example of the positive impact that one person’s actions can have on the world. She probably never intended nor expected the response of her community, or that Alabama’s segregation laws would be paid national attention and be brought before the Supreme Court. But, she did have the moral sense to recognize segregation as an unjust law, and also had the civic imperative and courage to disobey it.
She also paved the way for another activist to come onto the scene: Dr. Martin Luther King, whose nonviolent struggle for the civil rights movement cost him his life.
Parks’ courage earned her many honors and much deserved respect. She received the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as well as being ranked among Time magazine’s 20 most influential people of the 20th century.
Parks often worried in her later years that younger African-Americans had been shielded by older generations from the costs of the struggle for those rights.
Ed Board thinks it is important to remember that these events happened just 50 years ago. Our country has been able to achieve so much in that time. We must also remember that injustice is still capable of happening here.
We must take into consideration the hard work and sacrifice by individuals like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King and make certain that their efforts are always appreciated, and that the virtues they stood for, like equality, should never be taken for granted.
