In any major movement that brings about significant change in a nation or people, there is something called a watershed moment. The moment of the water was the signature event that began the offensive of a great and historic change. In American history, that water season may have been the Boston Tea Party. But in the context of black history, especially in light of the important role that the human rights movement has played in the history of black people in this country, there is only one moment that almost anyone who understands black history will point to.
The incident took place on December 1, 1955, on a city bus when a black woman named Rosa Parks boarded the bus. When the bus was full, the bus driver ordered Ms. Parks to release her seat to the white man as was the custom at the time. But Rosa Parks was not interested in seeing the cultural order continue. He refused to give up his seat.
The outbreak of resentment and social change that was unleashed by that one simple act of public disobedience is a time of water when anyone involved in the civil rights movement points to the most important event in modern black history. Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat that day and the trial of this act of disobedience brought to the forefront a national leader of a human rights organization named Drs. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This single event began to escalate and gather strength in the black community. It was an exciting and intimidating moment as the black community gained momentum and began to organize around these two courageous leaders and the result was the strongest civil rights protests in the history of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
There are many reasons why such a simple event has had such a profound effect on people as it has on blacks in the fifties. The frustration and accumulation of organizational power had built up in the black community. A situation like this can best be described as a tinderbox waiting to ignite a fire. When that common black woman finally decided she could no longer live under white slavery and put her foot down and said NO, that was the spark that sparked the human rights movement.
Rosa Parks was neither a professional striker nor a talented swindler. Because she was just a citizen and a simple woman with simple daily needs, that in itself was a powerful statement that this was a time for society to take action and make changes. He was not even looking to start a nation-changing human rights movement when he refused to relinquish his bus seat. As he said later in an interview about the event ...
"I will have to know forever what my rights were as a person and a citizen of Montgomery, Alabama." And in his autobiography, My Story explained… “People always say I did not give up my seat because I was tired, but that is not true. I was not physically tired, nor was I more tired than I used to be at the end of the working day. I was not old enough, even though some people had a picture of me as an adult at the time. I was forty-two years old. No, the only thing that bothered me was the pressure to give up. ”
Rosa Parks has earned the right to be treated as an individual by herself and to her people throughout America and even around the world through her simple act of public disobedience. He is an encouragement to all of us that we too must demand the right to human dignity for all the people who are citizens of this great world. And the story of Rosa Park's contempt shows that if we want that, it will be defeated.
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