Stand up for YOUR RIGHTS
Is there an issue you feel really strongly about? Is there an injustice that is so outrageous that you boil with rage and feel that you have to do something about it? Stand up for your beliefs by starting a campaign or undertaking some sort of non-violent direct action.
Take your inspiration from Rosa Parks. This previously very ordinary woman did something that was both very simple and very extraordinary. She refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus to a white male passenger. This single action changed the course of her own life and was a trigger for the Civil Rights Movement in the USA.
...sitting down ain't easy
Take Action
Stand up against injustice. Do something.
- What? Is there an issue or something that has happened that you feel really strongly about? Then do something to address it.
- When? Today. Now's the time to get started.
- Who? You of course!
- How? You decide. But taking that first step is the most important thing.
Find Out More
Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal' - Martin Luther King from his speech at Civil Rights March on Washington, 28 August 1963
Hear the voice of Dr Martin Luther King Jr at the King Centre: www.thekingcenter.org
Pay tribute to Rosa Parks, a brave and great lady. She died on 24th October 2005. She was the first women to lie in state at the Capitol. Visit her website. www.rosaparks.org
Rosa Parks, civil rights pioneer
Rosa Parks worked as a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, at a time when the southern states of the USA operated a kind of apartheid. She was arrested on 1st December 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus to a white male passenger, as demanded by the bus driver. She was tried and convicted of violating a local ordinance.
This sparked a city-wide boycott of the bus system by blacks, which started on 5th December and lasted 381 days.
Rosa Parks' courage catapulted her into world history, and she is now affectionately referred to as the 'Mother of the modern-day Civil Rights Movement'.
In 2005 aged 92, Rosa Parks continues her work with youth in the community through the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott also brought a young Baptist minister, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, to world prominence.
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"Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. Say that I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things in life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say. If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody he is traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain."
