From the Internet:
http:/Av\v\v.infopleasc.com
Black History Month
r.'eouom y> no^^v! >■ ^on
9
Ji2
Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s challenged racism in America and made the
country a more just and humane society for all. Below are a few of its many heroes.
Rosa l*arks
On December 1, 1955, in Moniiromor\. Alabama. Rosa Parks, an African-
American seamstress, left work and boarded a bus for home. As the bus became
crowded, the bus driver ordered Parks to give up her seat to a white passenger. Montgomery's buses were
segregated, with the seats in the front reserved for "whites only." Blacks had to sit at the back of the bus.
But if the bus was crowded and all the "whites only" seats were filled, black people were expected to give
up their seats—a black person sitting while a white person stood would never be tolerated in the racist
South. Rosa had had enough of such humiliation, and refused to give up her seat. "I felt I had a right to stay
where I was," she said. "I wanted this particular driver to know that we were being treated unfairly as indi
viduals and as a people." The bus driver had her arrested.
Marlin l.uihor Kirii:. .Ir.. heard about Parks's brave defiance and launched a boycott of Montgomery buses.
The 17,000 black residents of Montgomery pulled together and kept the boycott going for more than a
year. Finally, the Supreme Court intervened and declared segregation on buses unconstitutional. Rosa
Parks and the boycotters defeated the racist system, and she became known as "the mother of the civil
riiihts iiu)\einent."
Martin Luther Kina. Jr.
It wasn't just that Martin Luther King became the leader of the civil rights move
ment that made him so extraordinary—it was the way in which he led the movement.
King advocated ci\ il clisolvdicin.v. the non-violent resistance against unjust laws: "Non
violence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding and ennobles the
man who wields it." Civil rights activists organized demonstrations, marches, boycotts,
strikes, and voter-registration drives, and refused to obey laws that they knew were wrong
and unjust. These peaceful forms of protest were often met with vicious threats, arrests, beatings, and
worse. King emphasized how important it was that the civil rights movement did not sink to the level of the
racists and hate mongers they fought against: "Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking
from the cup of bitterness and hatred," he urged. "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane
of dignity and discipline." King's philosophy of "tough-mindedness and tenderheartedness" was not only
highly effective, but it gave the civil rights movement an inspiring moral authority and grace.
(Continued on page 10)