The article I chose is a significant social event that “affected change in contemporary America” (Harper & Leicht, 2011, p. 66); initiating a new era in the fight for freedom and equality. This event once began in 1896 on a train, with Homer Plessy, but it wasn’t until December 1, 1955 that it truly began on a bus. Rosa Parks the 42 year old seamstress who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger set into motion “what many view as the birth of the civil rights movement” (Lewis & Lucey, 2005, para. 12). Rosa Parks was arrested and convicted of violating the Jim Crow Laws, which she appealed challenging the legality of segregation. Her act of defiance spawned the Montgomery Bus Boycott, lead by a young man at the time who would fight for African American’s equality in America until the day he died, Martin Luther King, Jr. Rosa parks wasn’t a defiant woman, she was tired of being judged by the color of her skin; however her quiet act of defiance on the bus triggered a social revolution.
It has been a long journey and Rosa Parks was just one of many who fought for equality in America. Let us not forget those who not only fought for equality, but for their life because of their skin color; 14 year old Emmett Till, killed in 1955; NAACP field Secretary Medgar Evers, murdered 1963; 4 young Alabama girls murdered in a church in 1963; 21 year old Civil Rights worker James Chaney; and to all those whose names are forgotten that spilled blood, and attended the school