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Rosa Parks Advanced Us All [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-12-09  

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks said no to leaving her seat on the bus , when the driver asked her to, because she was black. Park’s moment of resistance – the refusal to move – lead to the Montgomery bus boycott and to the federal Montgomery bus lawsuit Browder v Gayle. The results of this case was a November 1956 decision that bus segregation is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Rosa Parks Advanced Us All

It only takes a moment

to change the world –

a simple act of courage,

fraught with consequences,

saying, "No, I won't get up."

Trampled rights, injustices piled up –

not just in a day, or a year

or a decade or a century –

abuse of human dignity

delivered by individuals,

enshrined into institutions...

Enough is enough.

No one knows when

that time will come

that makes the difference,

by taking a stand

not next week or tomorrow,

but now – when

an unknowable opportunity

appears

and an act of truth

shifts reality

and history changes course.

Rosa Parks had an unalienable right

to sit in her seat on the bus

after a day's hard work was done,

and her refusal to get up,

demanded because she was black,

expanded human freedom

and consciousness.

©2024 Carl Scott Harker

__________________________________________

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