“Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” Rosa Parks’ was born 100 years ago today.

A few months ago, I allowed intuition to guide me as I walked the streets on my way through downtown Montgomery, Alabama. I stopped to sit on the nearby bench before reading the sign. What a jaw-dropping moment of fascination when I actually turned to read it, as the stories I’d learned as a child came to life before my very eyes…

THE SIGN READS:
At the stop on this Montgomery, Alabama site on December 1, 1955, Mrs. Rosa Parks boarded the bus which would transport her name into history. Returning home after a long day working as a seamstress for Montgomery Fair department store,
she refused the bus driver’s orders to give up her seat to boarding whites. Her arrest, conviction, and fine launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Boycott began on December 5, the day of Parks’ trial, as a protest by African-Americans for unequal treatment they received on the bus line.
Refusing to ride the buses, they maintained the Boycott until the U.S. Supreme Court ordered integration of public transportation one year later. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the Boycott, the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement.