Somewhere in the universe, a gear in the machinery shifted.
— Eldridge Cleaver, about Rosa Parks
Fifty years ago today, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus to an able-bodied white man. For that act of defiance, she was arrested and fined $14.
The world is very different now, in no small part because Rosa Parks’ small act of defiance inspired millions of additional acts of defiance. Martin Luther King said, “We must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.”
By all the usual metrics, she was a perfectly ordinary person, like you or me. That is why she is remembered today. It would have been so easy to submit once again to one of the smaller injustices of Alabama’s system of segregation and discrimination. But she had had enough, and she would not back down. Because she was just like any one of us, her defiance provided an inspiring example that straightened countless bent backs.
She still provides that inspiration, fifty years later.
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