cultivating virtue

courage

Rosa Parks

How she sat there, the time right inside a place so wrong it was ready.

From Rosa, in On the Bus with Rosa Parks by Rita Dove

"We know the story. One December evening, a woman left work and boarded a bus for home. She was tired; her feet ached. But this was Montgomery, Ala., in 1955, and as the bus became crowded, the woman, a black woman, was ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger. When she remained seated, that simple decision eventually led to the disintegration of institutionalized segregation in the South, ushering in a new era of the civil rights movement."

Read the rest of the article-
http://205.188.238.181/time/time100/heroes/profile/parks02.html


I don't know if Rosa Parks knew the times were ripe for change or if she was just to tired to care anymore about the social caste into which she had been so indelicately shoved. Either way, it took courage for her to keep sitting. Her courage was not of action but of passive defiance...defiance of an authority that was in the wrong. She had no idea of what the outcome would be and took a great risk to remain where she was. I wonder what was going through the minds of the rest of the people on the bus. I wonder how many were beyond infuriated and how many were thinking that they wished they had the guts to do what that lady was doing. Not only did her actions spur a nation to change, but how many on that bus were changed just by being in the presence of such an example. Very cool.