A Quote by Michel Martin
You probably know the name of Rosa Parks. You probably know that her refusal to move to the colored section in the back of a city bus sparked the Montgomery bus boycotts, one of the pivotal moments in the American civil rights movement.
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There were three Selma-to-Montgomery marches in March 1965, and Rosa Parks had missed the first one. Parks, whose act of civil disobedience sparked the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, moved to Detroit two years later for safety reasons.
Rosa Parks was primed, she had the Civil Rights Movement behind her, she didn't just decide to sit on the bus, it was strategic.
If Willie Nelson had been Rosa Parks, there never would have been a civil rights movement in this country, because he refuses to leave the back of the bus.
If Rosa Parks had not refused to move to the back of the bus, you and I might never have heard of Dr. Martin Luther King.
If Rosa Parks had taken a poll before she sat down in the bus in Montgomery, she'd still be standing.
There were these great women in Montgomery, [Rosa Louise] Parks was among them. Jo Ann Robinson [who organized the bus boycott] was among them. It's always these ordinary women and men of grace who have been waiting and seething and planning to change things that are unjust that bring movement.
Persistence. Change doesn't happen overnight. You have to stay with it. Rosa Parks helped start the Civil Rights movement in earnest in 1955. Then it was nearly a decade until the Civil Rights Act was passed.
The Nova Scotian black community always remembered Viola Desmond - they didn't lose track of her, ever. Her memory was very much alive there, but the rest of us didn't know anything about her. It's just so typical of Canadians that we know Rosa Parks, in that "bad country to the south of us" - they needed this lovely, courageous woman to sit down in the front of the bus - but we wouldn't know ours, because of course we "don't have racism in Canada."
Rosa Parks was the queen mother of a movement whose single act of heroism sparked the movement for freedom, justice and equality. Her greatest contribution is that she told us a regular person can make a difference.
The civil rights movement would experience many important victories, but Rosa Parks will always be remembered as its catalyst.
Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens.
In the struggle against sexual discrimination on Wall Street, Pamela K. Martens is a latter-day Rosa Parks - a woman who, metaphorically speaking, refused to sit in the back of the bus.
The argument about marriage equality will one day seem as arcane and shocking to us as the fact that Rosa Parks had to get up and go to the back of the bus.
Most students graduate from high school knowing nine words about the civil rights movement: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and "I Have a Dream." And that's it!
[Rosa Louise] Parks used to say, "Everybody looks at me because I sat down once in Montgomery, but the real hero is a woman named Septima Clark."She created the Citizenship Schools [where civil-rights activists taught basic literacy and political education classes].
Rosa Parks was a woman of strength, conviction, and morality. Her action on December 1, 1955, to defy the law made her a leading figure in our nation's civil rights history.
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