“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.”

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American activist, who played a revolutionary role in the ‘Montgomery bus boycott’. She helped initiate the civil rights moment in the United States. It all happened one fine day when she refused to give her seat to a white man on the bus. Parks was of the view that she had bought the ticket, paid the equal fare if not more, and was heading to the same destination. Logically, she must be treated as an equal and thus, refused to give up her seat. This simple refusal had a revolutionary impact on thousands of lives then and now. It was not that the suppression was not felt by others. It was. It’s just that they were too afraid to speak up for themselves and all that they needed was for someone to initiate the revolution and that’s what Rosa did. Right after this incident, the bus was stopped and Rosa was taken into custody. “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired,” wrote Rosa in her autobiography,

“but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically…No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

On December 5, Rosa was found guilty of violating the segregation laws. After Rosa’s arrest, the black population in Montgomery decided to boycott the bus services.

No one had anticipated this local boycott to rise to such a level. Some ministers and the population took advantage of this boycott and formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and they decided to elect Dr. Martin Luther King as the MIA’s president. MIA appealed to a number of courts and demanded their wants to be heard. Violence from the other side began towards the protesters but the boycott remained unhindered despite all the obstacles. The local authorities continued to ignore the protests and boycotts, but the national and international press and agencies caught sight of the struggles. Due to pressure from all national and international organizations, the Supreme Court finally decided to rule the bus segregation law as unconstitutional.

The initiative taken by Rosa Parks and the result that it brought about led people to call her- “The mother of the Civil Rights Movement”. Rosa lost her job, she lost respect among her white counterparts, she continued to face death threats and assaults, but that never stopped the strong old lady from speaking up. She always used every platform to bring light to the unaddressed issues. In the coming years, she even wrote an autobiography,
“Rosa Parks: My Story”. She was even awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest and the most respected honour, the US bestows on its citizen. She died at the age of 92 in the year 2005 but the changes she initiated, the things she taught us, the lives that she changed and the women she taught how to speak up- they never died. She’ll always be remembered as a strong lady, who taught others around her- the art of being strong.

– Vani Dhaka