All She Wanted To Do Was Keep Her Seat

And with that simple act, Rosa Parks helped ignite the civil rights movement that finally brought about a groundswell of change, ending the Jim Crow and racial segregation laws that had stood since the end of Reconstruction.

Rosa Parks died last nite at the age of 92.

Rosa Parks' simple act of defiance spurred the boycott of the Montgomery, Alabama bus system, and propelled a minister by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the national forefront.

I recall reading about her and the civil rights movement in the book Eyes on the Prize. That book details all that happened as a result of that one simple act. And that book is still one of the best ways to learn about the civil rights movement and Rosa's legacy.

The AP reports:

Mrs. Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title "mother of the civil rights movement."

At that time, Jim Crow laws in place since the post-Civil War Reconstruction required separation of the races in buses, restaurants and public accommodations throughout the South, while legally sanctioned racial discrimination kept blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in the North.

The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress, an active member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat.

Mrs. Parks refused, despite rules requiring blacks to yield their seats to whites. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.

Speaking in 1992, she said history too often maintains "that my feet were hurting and I didn't know why I refused to stand up when they told me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long."

A simple act that changed the course of history. It's something to keep in mind. Sometimes modest people with modest goals change the course of history. That's what Rosa Parks did.

Around the blogosphere, people are writing all kinds of eulogies and remembrances of Rosa Parks.