This week marks the 100th birthday of civil rights legend Rosa Parks.
To celebrate the date, the U.S. Postal Service has issued a Rosa Parks stamp. It is a fitting tribute to one of the nation's greatest citizens.
In December 1955, Parks was working as a seamstress at a department store in Montgomery, Ala., a city people called "The Cradle of the Confederacy." On the Montgomery city bus system, whites sat in the front of the bus; blacks sat in the back. If there were no seats for whites, blacks had to give up their seats and stand. It was a source of daily humiliation.
Parks was a passenger on a crowded bus on Dec. 1, 1955, when she refused an order by a white bus driver to give up her seat to a white passenger. She was jailed and fined for violating Montgomery's segregation laws.
Her act of defiance set off the Montgomery bus boycott in December 1955. Blacks formed the Montgomery Improvement Association and decided they would no longer ride the buses in Montgomery as long as they were segregated. Blacks either walked or were given rides by members of local civic groups.
The boycott stunned the whites and their city officials. The nearly 13-month boycott would eventually lead to desegregation of the city's public transit system, a major victory at that time. More important, the modern civil rights movement began that day, and a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr. was propelled into the spotlight.
Rosa Parks was more than some historical accident. She prepared for her moment in history for years. Parks was a volunteer field secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1955. She also served on the Women's Political Council in the city, a group that had been out front seeking equal rights for blacks.
Parks' famous act of protest did not come without personal sacrifice. She was declared a pariah in the city, lost her job as a seamstress, and received death threats. She eventually moved to Detroit. She died Oct. 24, 2005, at age 92.
Now called "the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement," Rosa Parks resisted such labels. She always said she was just trying to do what was right. She also said her act never had anything to do with being physically tired.
"The only tired I was," Parks remarked years later, was "tired of giving in."
She was an extraordinary human being, and we're all in her debt.
Brian Gilmore writes for the Progressive Media Project.