Be Tired of Giving In
By Emilie Gunti
On December 1, 1955, a woman sitting on a Montgomery bus in Alabama refused to give up her seat for a white man. Despite the heavy Jim Crow laws placed in the state, Rosa Parks was against the principle that one had to give up their seat based on race, which led to her arrest. In her autobiography she mentioned, “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically… No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
The effect of not giving in fueled the civil rights movement, starting with the Montgomery bus boycotts. The participation of the boycotts was higher than expected and it gave rise to the creation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, with Martin Luther King Jr as the president. The bus segregation case traversed through the courts and ended up at the Supreme Court, where it was ruled unconstitutional in 1956, and the boycott ended soon after. As a result of not giving in, Parks was arrested, lost her job, and was harassed and threatened. Not giving in also led Parks being called the “mother of the civil rights movement.” She was honored with the Congressional Gold Medal, and to this day, stands as a symbol of integrity and equality.
Parks’s act fueled substantial change in a matter of months. Imagine if we all had that mindset. December is recognized as Universal Human Rights month, and Parks’ act 67 years ago serves as a reminder that we should all be tired. We should be tired of being the bystander. We should be tired of racist or sexist comments, even if they are passed off as jokes. We should be tired of putting others down for our own benefit. We should be tired of giving in.
References:
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/rosa-parks
