Drawing Parallels in Civil Rights Movement

Rosa Parks and Mahatma Ghandhi: Voices against injustice

Dec 1st 2005: 50th Anniversary of Montgomery Bus Boycott
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks was arrested December 1st, 1955, for violating segregation laws when she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man. The move sparked a one-year boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.

She was actively involved in the civil rights movement since the early 40's. The bus incident was not the starting point for Rosa, but it stands out as the most remarkable anecdote that qualified her as an icon of the civil rights movement in America and today her name stands proudly beside Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. She passed away recently on October 24th, 2005, and her body was placed in honour in the Capitol Rotunda.

Pietermaritzburg: The Beginning of Gandhi's Odyssey
Mahatma Gandhi was seated in the first-class compartment of the train that was to carry him from Pietermaritzburg to Pretoria in S. Africe. He had the required first-class ticket. A European who entered the compartment at that moment hastened to summon railway officials, who then ordered Gandhi to leave the compartment, since 'coolies' and non-whites were apparently not permitted in first-class compartments. Gandhi protested and produced his ticket, but was warned that he would be forcibly removed if he did not make a gracious exit. As Gandhi refused to comply with the order, he was pushed out of the train, and his luggage was tossed out on to the platform. The train steamed away, leaving Gandhi on the platform ...

"It was winter," Gandhi wrote later in his autobiography, and "the cold was extremely bitter. My over-coat was in my luggage, but I did not dare to ask for it lest I should be insulted again, so I sat and shivered". He says he began to think of his "duty": ought he to stay back and fight for his "rights", or should he return to India? His own "hardship was superficial", "only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice."

Gandhi stayed on and fought for justice ... and thus was born his non-violent civil disobedience.

The humble man, Father of our Nation once said:
"I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills."

Material borrowed in part from Manas and Wikipedia- the free enclyopedia.