Wednesday, December 1, 2010

55th Anniversary Of Rosa Parks' Arrest

Today was the day 55 years ago that Rosa Parks triggered a civil rights movement.

A few months after Claudette Colvin's March 2 arrest for refusing to give up her seat to a white bus patron occurred in Montgomery, AL.   Rosa Parks found herself being arrested for the same offense. 

It triggered the successful 381 day long Montgomery Bus Boycott, led to the emergence of a dynamic young minister by the name of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.as a national leader and jumpstarted the national African-American civil rights movement.

And we owe it all to a quiet dignified lady who'd had enough of being oppressed.

We hear often that one person can make a difference.   One person with courage and conviction can act as the backbone and rallying point of moral courage for others who want to do the right thing and stand up for social justice, but are too timid or wavering in their commitment to do so.

Rosa Parks was the woman of that hour.   Although she's no longer with us, we are indebted to the 'Mother of the Civil Rights Movement'.

We as liberals need to be fighting tooth and nail to ensure that what those folks sacrificed, fought, got beat down and even died for doesn't get rolled back by wallowing in white privilege conservafools.

And those of us who are trans African-Americans need to be looking to the examples of our parents and grandparents fight in the 50's and 60's and taking lessons from it to apply to our own civil rights battle in this decade and beyond.