Happy Birthday Rosa Parks and thank you.

Thank you Rosa Parks

On this day in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus. Her arrest ignited the civil rights movement. Thank you Ms. Parks.

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty." ..Henry David Thoreau

Viola Desmond - Canada's Rosa Parks - finally honoured

"Black rights activist Viola Desmond, who was jailed for defiantly sitting in the "whites only" section of a Nova Scotia film house, will be the first Canadian woman to be featured on the country's $10 bill.

Desmond is often referred to as "Canada's Rosa Parks," though her historic act of defiance occurred nine years before Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala.

At age 32, Desmond decided to go to the Roseland Theatre to see a movie while her car was getting fixed on Nov. 8, 1946, but she was thrown out of the "whites only" section and sent to jail. Black people could only sit in the balcony of the theatre.

The next morning, Desmond was convicted of defrauding the province of a one penny tax, the difference in tax between a downstairs and upstairs ticket, even though Desmond had asked to pay the one cent difference.

Desmond was released after paying a $20 fine and $6 in court costs. She appealed her conviction but lost."

Read the rest of the story on CBC News

Thank you Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American civil rights activist, whom the United States Congress called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". Her birthday, February 4, and the day she was arrested, December 1, have both become Rosa Parks Day, commemorated in California and Missouri (February 4), and Ohio and Oregon (December 1).

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation. Others had taken similar steps, including Bayard Rustin in 1942, Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys in 1952, and Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith) who were arrested in Montgomery for not giving up their bus seats months before Parks.

..... Wikipedia