Rosa Parks: "Why do you push us around?"
Officer: "I don't know but the law is the law and you're under arrest."

On the evening of December 1^st in the year 1955

Rosa Parks was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law

Requiring black passengers to relinquish their seats to whites

And to always sit at the back of the bus

Her arrest sparked a 381 day boycott

Of the Montgomery Alabama bus system

And led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision

Banning all segregation on public transportation

Rosa and Raymond Parks moved to Detroit

Where for over twenty years

The ‘Mother of the Civil Rights Movement’

Worked for Congressman John Conyers

In addition to the Rosa Parks Peace Prize (Stockholm, 1994)

And the U.S. Medal of Freedom (1996)

Rosa Parks has been awarded two dozen honorary doctorates

From universities all around the world

Rosa Parks died at the age of 94

On October 24, 2005

Her courage had changed the lives of so many

And she was the first woman in American history

To lie in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol

An honor usually reserved for Presidents

Fifty years ago today

A simple act of defiance

By an ordinary citizen

Who believed in Justice

And Freedom

For All

And some still say

“But what can I do

To change the world?

I’m just an ordinary citizen.”