Before the Legend

People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically… No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

~Rosa Parks

The problem with learning history is that we have to try to earn through the eyes of people and different perspectives. Mattel, a toy company, made a new series of dolls so little girls could have role models, making the dolls with different skin colors and ethnicities. The purpose is that kids of different backgrounds don’t feel alone and have no one to look up to. With the Rosa Parks doll, Mattel put that she was only a mere seamstress, leading a typical life until that fateful day on December 1, 1955. Sometimes people will leave out details that may change the story entirely. In reality, Rosa Parks was a dedicated activist for racial injustice as well as the secretary for her local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP) decades before her arrest in December 1955. This a part of the story most people leave out saying that her career in the civil rights movement started only after the bus boycott.

Rosa Parks showed not only the people of her time but ours as well that anybody can stand up for their rights. She is someone that people should aspire to be like and embody the power that she had. She was not only a woman and a minority but a citizen in the eyes of the law. We should all remember that as people have done in the past and continue to do today, we have the right to stand up for our rights. The power that the government has comes from the people.

I knew someone had to take the first step and I made up my mind not to move.

~Rosa Parks

We all have a take a stand for our rights or people will brush them off as unimportant. There are so many people advocating for change and you can join. Before anything, you are a human being and some rights come with that. The only way change can happen is through the people who fight for it.

I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.

~Rosa Parks

For More Information On People Who Took The First Step Listen To This Podcast