“But ultimately the fight for justice must be won by the people themselves. Only the stubborn, intense efforts of citizens [...] can move the system in the right direction. It was not an agency of government that struck the most important blow for justice in the 1950s. It was a lady named Rosa Parks, here in Montgomery, who decided that she would not go to the back of a bus because she was Black.”
Our Quote of the Week honors Rosa Parks’ activism during the Civil Rights era. Parks’ refusal to give up a seat to a White passenger on a segregated public bus till serves as a reminder of the power of an individual to stand up for justice.
On December 1, we marked the 69th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ historic refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. Sargent Shriver recalled Parks’ pivotal act of civil disobedience in a 1973 address entitled “In the Wake of Watergate: A Return to Justice”. The era during which Shriver gave this speech had its own tensions: In addition to the public’s growing mistrust in political leaders, and a democratic crisis, the country was experiencing a backlash to the civil rights gains of the 1960s and was dealing with the aftermath of the Vietnam war. In a fiery speech that addresses all of these issues, Sargent Shriver encouraged his audience to pursue what he called “the American strategy":
“We do not need a Southern strategy in this nation, or a Northern strategy, or a Western or an Eastern strategy. We need to recover the American strategy expressed in our Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and have equal rights -- before the law and in the courts, but also in the schools, on the streets and farms, and in the neighborhoods of this nation.”
Today, we celebrate the efforts of individuals like Rosa Parks, who courageously implemented this “American strategy” in the fight for equality. May the important anniversary of her protest continue to serve as a reminder of the influence each of us can exert in the face of injustice.
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