She was also a Civil Rights activist, having served as secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP many years before.

Rosa Parks was not just a poor seamstress and housekeeper who got fed up one day and started this momentous event. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was led by a little known young preacher, Martin Luther King. The Boycott lasted until the buses were officially desegregated in December of 1956 when a federal court ruled that segregation in municipal bus lines was unconstitutional. This incident sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, one of the early galvanizing events of the U.S. In 1955 Rosa Parks, a black woman, refused to give her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, municipal bus to a white passenger. For more on non-violent civil disobedience see the Learning Guides to Gandhi and A Force More Powerful. The prospect of black workers, too poor to own a car but too proud to sit at the back of the bus, walking to work or depending on rides from fellow protestors, awakened the nation to the injustice of unequal treatment of blacks. The protests in front of courthouses seeking the right to vote made it crystal clear that denying the vote to blacks was inconsistent with democratic values. Thus, the lunch counter sit-ins, in which black college students asked to be served lunch at the same counters used by whites, placed in stark relief the unfairness of denying service to black patrons.

When the situation is presented to them in stark relief, in the media and glare of public opinion, the inconsistency becomes to much to bear. Non-violent civil disobedience is a powerful force when it shows the public, including those who benefit from the system, sought to be changed, that the status quo is inconsistent with their ethical principles and the way that they want their society to work. FICTION (SOAPS, DRAMAS, AND REALITY/SURVIVAL SHOW).

The long walk home the movie