Rosa Parks - Wonderful Woman No. 12

Rosa Parks - 1913-2005
African-American Civil Rights Activist

Right now, I really wish I were a better writer in order to be able to fully convey just how wonderful this woman was.

The name Rosa Parks instantly brings a lump of emotion to my throat. She is someone I feel truly in awe of and someone who makes me realise the great light, hope and power one person can have.

She was an ordinary woman, who did an extraordinary thing. It is incomprehensible to me that it was once common and acceptable practise for companies to favour one person over another simply because of the colour of their skin but that's how life was in America in the early and mid 1900s. Black and white people segregated, everything always in favour of those with white skin.

I would like to think everyone reading this is familiar with the Rosa Parks story but for anyone who is not;

Bus companies generally had sections at the back for 'coloureds' (as was the expression used at the time) and the front of the bus kept for white passengers. These sections were indicated by a sign that could be moved by the bus driver or conductor, if there were more white passengers the sign would be moved further back, allowing less seating for non-white passengers. Black people were never permitted to sit across the aisle from white people. It was expected that if more white people got on the bus, the sign would be moved back and black people would have to give up their seats to accommodate.

In December 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks took a bus journey. She paid the fare and sat in the allocated area for black people. During the ride, the bus began to fill up with more white people, until all the "white seats" were taken, leaving some white passengers standing in the aisle of the bus. The driver moved the sign indicating the area for black passengers further back and demanded that the four black passengers who were seated before the divide to move back. Three of them did, one of them, Rosa, did not. The driver urged her to go back and when she refused to move, stating "I don't think I should have to stand up," the police were called and Rosa was arrested. In court on a later date, she was found guilty of disorderly conduct and fined.

It is this single act of defiance, of believing that something was wrong and not just saying so but committing herself to the act of her one-woman protest that has really made Rosa a woman to be in awe of.

Her defiance and subsequent arrest sparked a boycott of the bus company, the boycott lasted 381, until the law requiring segregation on public buses was lifted.

Actually, no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.
Martin Luther King