An American Hero

She missed the fiftieth anniversary of her history- making act by just a few weeks: on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested, tried and convicted. The next day, an unknown minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. helped organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the Civil Rights movement began in earnest.

Rosa Parks died Monday at the age of 92.

She was not the first African American to refuse to sit in the Negro section---Jackie Robinson did it while he was in the Army. And to some extent, she knew what she was doing---she was already aware of Civil Rights organizations and ideas. But she acted on her own, and movement leaders saw her case as the one they wanted to use to begin to attack Jim Crow laws throughout the South.

Nevertheless, Rosa Parks was the little lady who started this big movement. She was strong and modest then and for the rest of her life. No more American a hero ever lived than Rosa Parks.