Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (1913 –2005) was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement, whom the United States Congress later called ‘the First Lady of Civil Rights’ and ‘the Mother of the Freedom Movement’.

On December 1, 1955, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake’s order to give up her seat in the ‘colored section’ to a white passenger. Blake said, “Well, if you don’t stand up, I’m going to have to call the police and have you arrested.” Parks said, “You may do that.” Soon a police officer arrested her.

Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation. But the NAACP organizers believed that Parks was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience. This led to the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott which was announced at black churches in the area, and a front-page article in the Montgomery Advertiser helped spread the word.

“The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world.”

The first stirrings to fight bus segregation and injustice in Parks’ life began in elementary school where school buses took white students to their new school and black students had to walk to theirs: “I’d see the bus pass every day. But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world.”

Although widely honoured in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job as a seamstress in a local department store, and received death threats for years afterwards.

On October 24, 2005, at the age of 92, Rosa Parks quietly died in her apartment in Detroit, Michigan.

Rosa Parks received many accolades during her lifetime, including the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP’s highest award, and the prestigious Martin Luther King Jr. Award. On September 9, 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honour given by the United States’ Executive branch. The following year, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. Legislative branch. TIME magazine named Rosa Parks on its 1999 list of ‘The 20 Most Influential People of the 20th Century.’

Jerry Fernandez, SJ

The author is an XLRI Alumnus and currently Asst. Parish Priest at St. Xavier’s College Parish, Ahmedabad.