On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was tired.

Parks (1913-2005) had worked a full day in her job as a seamstress and when she boarded the bus for the ride home, she plopped herself down in the first available seat in the black section in the rear of the bus, exhausted and perhaps ready to  take a little nap on the way home.  When the white section in the front filled, the bus driver came to the back and told Mrs. Parks to give up her "black seat" to a white patron.

Rosa Parks was black. And tired.

She told the white bus driver, James Blake, she would not get up.  He called the police and they arrested her and threw her in jail.

Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat to a white person was the first act of resistance to bus segregation.  It brought on surge of opposition from the black citizens in Montgomery, Alabama.  They refused to take the bus enmasse and eventually forced the entire bus system to desegregate.

Rosa Parks is considered to be the "spark that lit the match that brought on the Civil Rights movement.

She was a pious, unassuming meek soul who simply had had enough.  God bless this towering American figure on her 100th birthday.

 

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