America's Democracy and Freedom

Gracefully Defiant...Simply Tired

"And today, she takes her rightful place among those who shaped this nation's course, and we do well by placing a statue of her here. But we can do no greater honor than to remember and to carry forward the power of her principle and courage born of conviction."

—President Barrack Obama

On December 1, 1955, an attractive African American seamstress, Mrs. Rosa Parks, boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus in downtown Montgomery. She was returning home after her regular days work in the Montgomery Fair—a leading Department store. Tired from long hours of being on her feet, Mrs. Parks sat down in the first seat behind the section reserved for whites. Not long after she took her seat, the bus operator ordered her, along with three other African American passengers, to move back to accommodate white-boarding passengers. With every seat on the bus filled this meant that if Mrs. Parks followed the driver's command, she would have to stand wild a white male passenger, who had just boarded the bus, would sit. The other three African American passengers immediately comply with the driver's request. But Mrs. parks quietly refuse resulted in her arrest.

There was much speculation about why Mrs. parks did not obey the driver. There were many people in the white community who argued that she had been planted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in order to lay the groundwork for the test case, and at first glance that explanation seemed quite plausible, after all, she was a former secretary of the local branch of the NAACP. So persistent and persuasive was this argument that it convinced many reporters from all over the country. Nevertheless, the accusations were unwarranted, as the testimony of both Mrs. parks and NAACP official revealed. Actually, no one can understand the action to Mrs. Parks unless they realize that eventually, the cup of the endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, "I can take it no longer." Mrs. Parks refusal to move back was the intrepid affirmation that she had had enough. It was an individual expression of a timeless longing for human dignity and freedom. She was not "planted" there by the NAACP as some had supposed, or any other organization, but planted by her sense of dignity and self-respect and anchored to that seat by the accumulated indignities of days gone by and the boundless aspirations of generations yet unborn. She was a victim of both the forces of history and the forces of destiny. She had been tracked down by the Zeitgeist—the spirit of the time.

Fortunately, Mrs. Parks was ideal for the role assigned to her by history. She was a charming person with the radiant personality, soft spoken and calm in all situations. Her character was impeccable and her dedication deep-rooted. All of these traits together made her one of the most respectable people in the African American community.

More than half a century after Rosa Parks helped kindle the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama; she has become the first black woman to be honored with a life-size statue in the nation's capital.

At the dedication ceremony, attended by dozens of Mrs. Park's relatives, President Obama and the congressional leaders paid tribute to Mrs, Parks', whose act of defiance and work in the civil rights movement helped spur desegregation across the country and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Almost simultaneously with the ceremony, the landmark law was facing a legal challenge in the Supreme Court, across the street from the Capitol.

"This morning, we celebrate a seamstress, slight of stature but mighty in courage." President Obama said.

The statue of Mrs. Parks captures her waiting to be arrested on December 1, 1955, after she refused to give up her seat for a white passenger on a crowded segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She is seated, dressed in a heavy wool coat and clutching her purse as she looks out of an unseen window waiting for the police.