“Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.” -Rosa Parks

Today would have marked Rosa Parks’ 107th birthday.

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was born February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. She was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The United States Congress has called her “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement.”

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake’s order to relinquish her seat in the “colored section” to a white passenger, after the whites-only section was filled. Parks’ prominence in the community and her willingness to become a controversial figure inspired the black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year, the first major direct action campaign of the post-war civil rights movement.

Parks’ act of defiance and the Montgomery bus boycott became national symbols of the Civil Rights Movement.

Her example both to stand up to the discriminating laws of her day, as well as her ongoing fight during her entire life, teaches us that we must resist evil and we must be teaching the next generation. We must be a model of what it means to be courageous to do the right thing.

In this way, what we start in our lives today, will be continued on by those coming after us. The work is never done, but we have a responsibility to ensure that it continues.

– Jason