The day a quiet refusal to give up a seat helped change a country

THIS is a truly historic photograph. It is Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff DH Lackey in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1956, when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white person on a local bus.

It is hard to imagine now, but in Montgomery back then the whites were given the front seats on buses. As the bus filled up, black passengers had to move further back, stand or simply get off the bus if there was no room. Rosa simply decided one day not to move.

She was found guilty of disorderly conduct and fined $10. However, her action provoked a boycott of the bus companies in Montgomery for more than a year by most of the city’s 40,000 black residents, which led to the segregation being dropped because of the financial losses the companies were suffering.

Rosa herself faced death threats for her stand, and lost her job in a department store.

She had to leave the state to find work, and eventually was employed as a secretary by a black member of Congress, where she continued to campaign for civil rights.

As President Barack Obama once put it: “Refusing to give up a seat on a segregated bus was the simplest of gestures, but her grace, dignity, and refusal to tolerate injustice helped spark a Civil Rights Movement that spread across America.”

Meanwhile, President Trump no doubt thinks that Rosa Parks is a time-share complex he owns.