On this date 55 years ago, December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus. She wasn't the first person to commit this act of civil disobedience -- other women had done the same thing -- but it did mark a tipping point. Her act kicked off a boycott of buses by black citizens that lasted 381 days. It brought a young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. to national attention. And it sparked the beginning of a finally strong, finally successful, civil rights movement.
Civil disobedience. A proud, a noble, an effective practice. We ignore it at our peril.
