Elijah Lewis: “there are many today who may not understand today why December 1, 1955, will long be remembered throughout American…”

“there are many today who may not understand today why December 1, 1955, will long be remembered throughout American history. That was the day a quiet, somewhat shy, 42-year old African American seamstress named Rosa Parks was ordered to get up and give her seat to a white passenger on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. For many years, countless times, all day, every day, all throughout the American South, African Americans had submitted to that humiliating demand. But that one December day, Rosa Parks simply refused to get up. It is true, she volunteered for the local NAACP chapter in Montgomery, but she had not planned a protest that day. She was just trying to get home. She was tired, and she had had enough. Through that one simple act, Rosa Parks displayed nothing short of raw courage. It was dangerous--very dangerous--to defy the customs, traditions, and laws of racial discrimination and segregation in the South. The Brown v. Board of Education decision had been issued by the Supreme Court only 18 months before. In reaction, violence arid intimidation erupted all across the South. There was so much tension, so much hate. In August of 1955, a 14-year-old African American boy, named Emmett Till had been murdered and mutilated by two white men while he was visiting his uncle in Money, Mississippi. I believe there is a force--call it God or the spirit of history-- that tracks us down and selects us to participate in a cause much greater than ourselves.…”