ROSA PARKS

An iconic women in the struggle for civil rights in America, Rosa Louise McCauley –maiden name– was born in 1913 and raised in Tuskegee, a southern town. During her childhood and youth she suffered the wrongs and injustices of segregation, and in 1950 she decided to join the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Five years later, being in a bus, she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger and move to the rear, where blacks were discriminated passengers. Because of her incarceration, an unknown pastor at that time, Martin Luther King organized the famous protest against public buses in Montgomery. He invited African Americans not to use this transport to move around.

The resistance lasted over a year, and the lack of passengers led to the near-ruin of the bus company. Finally thanks to the protest, discrimination by race in that transport was forbidden by a legal decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.

The decision of Rosa Parks was the cornerstone of a continuum of actions against segregation.

Since then, having moved to Detroit, she went on a long career as an activist against racism. She was honored as the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999 and she had a tribute held at the Capitol Round in Washingtonwhen she died, because of Alzheimer, in 2005. Here we are a few Rosa Parks’ thoughts…

Each person should live their life as a model for others.

 

I just want to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free.

 

Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.

 

They always say I did not get up from the seat because I was tired, but it is not true. I had no physical fatigue else than normal at the end of a working day. I was not old either, although many people believe that at that time I was old; I was 42 years old. No, what I was tired of was about giving in and yielding.

 

When the law is unjust, it is right to disobey.

 

Freedom is not for free.

I wish you a very nice week,

Álex Rovira