Thought For The Day – Wednesday 4^th February 2025

Art work above by Mu’ifatin.

“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.” (Rosa Parks)

It only takes one person to make a positive difference. It only takes one person to change the world.

Today marks113 years since the birth of Rosa Parks.

On this day last year, many bus companies in America reserved a seat in honour of Rosa Parks.

Never forgotten.

On the evening of 1st December 1955,  seventy years ago last year, in Montgomery, Alabama, in the United States of America,  Rosa Parks, stood up to racism and negative prejudice and negative discrimination.

Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white person.

In so doing, this humble, hard-working, thoughtful,  and unassuming seamstress created and weaved a beautiful garment and tapestry that would change history.

Her act became an inspirational pattern,

Though there were individual “freedom riders” before Rosa,  Rosa’s seemingly small action was the catalyst for “The Montgomery Bus Boycott”, where the black community refused to use busses until the law was changed.  The protest, led by the local Christian minister Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, pictured with Rosa below,  lasted 381 days.

As a brilliant quote articulates:  “Because Rosa sat down, Martin stood up”.  

Both catapulted each other to the centre of the Civil Rights Movement. Both were equally essential.

Rosa passed away on the 24th October 2005, aged 92, twenty years ago last year.

A wonderful 2018 “Doctor Who” episode movingly told Rosa’s story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bpwm2m/doctor-who-20052022-series-11-3-rosa