The equal rights crusader, Rosa Parks, would have been 100 years old today. This woman, whom the U.S. Congress dubbed, “the mother of the freedom movement,” took her most famous stand for civil liberty when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man during the Jim Crow era. Arrested for doing what she thought was right, this display of civil disobedience placed her alongside other champions of fairness and the desegregation of the United States such as Martin Luther King Jr.
Parks’ tenacity in the face extreme adversity was why she eventually came to be viewed as beacon of change, hope, bravery and justice in America. Today, and in light of Black History Month, we celebrate this national heroine.
