Rosa Parks, whose challenge to the segregated bus system in the southern states of America sparked a civil rights revolution.
There is an art to sitting down and standing up.
Books should be written on the subject,
Motion pictures made, modern dance routines
Worked out and ballets choreographed
In celebration of the simple change of attitude
We undergo at least a hundred times a day.
When Rosa Park put dignity before discomfort
And decided that the ticket she had bought entitled her
To more than just the ride, an elemental change occurred
Deep in the psyche of America, nothing earth-shattering
Initially, rather the opposite extreme, as though
A fragile butterfly had stamped one insignificant foot,
Provoking worms to turn in hitherto unheard of quantities,
Prompting particles of aspiration, pebbles of promise
To roll down hill in an unstoppable cascade,
Bringing along with them the sort of stones which gather up
The moss of mass opinion and precipitate
An avalanche of social change, triggered
The day a seamstress on an Alabama bus
Sat down on principle, stood up for what was right.
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