December 1, 1955
“No” and “You may do that”.
Are you going to stand up? - “No”.
I will have you arrested if you don’t - “You may do that”.
No long orations, no cryptic messages, no playing to the audience. Just a simple answer to an unjust question and the defusing acknowledgement of the consequences of her actions. The speeches, the marches, the hopes and tears, and the dreams all would follow.
Contrary to what many thought - that she was overly tired that evening from a long day at work - Rosa Parks has said she was no more tired than after any other day of work. “No,” she said, “the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
She was arrested that evening of course and you already know the story from there onward, including that a Montgomery newcomer - one Rev. Martin Luther King - was asked to run the planned bus boycott. The planned one day boycott stretched out to 381 days and nearly bankrupted Montgomery’s public transit system.
But Parks never thought herself a saint. In a 1995 interview with the Washington Post, she said she was “just a person who wanted to be seated on the bus…”
“I want everyone to remember me as a person who wanted to be free.”
