December 1, 1955, started out like any normal day for Rosa Parks, she got off the bus after work and sat down. At the next stop several white people got on. The bus driver glanced back, and told Rosa and the people around her to move. The other African Americans around her stood up and shuffled to the back of the bus. But Rose stayed seated. The bus driver told her if she didn’t get up, he’d have to have her arrested, to which she replied, “Then you may do that.”

Rose refused to give in to this injustice. Some people have suggested she was so weary that she couldn’t stand up, but that was not the case. It wasn’t that she was tired physically; she was just tired of surrendering. When she sat down she was really standing up for the oppressed people.

Rosa’s refusal to give up her seat was one of the turning points in the history of civil rights in the United States. Her one act of quiet, peaceful defiance triggered a series of protests and boycotts, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in which almost all of the black people (and some whites) in Rosa’s hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, refused to ride city buses for more than a year. They were tired of segregation and they refused to put up with it any longer.

Surely Rosa Parks life was marked by opposition and discrimination. Yet rather than being overcome by bitterness and hatred, she chose to act for justice for herself and others.