Rosa Parks

They say that we have a free will and the right to do or say whatever we
want to. But then why are there so many people that have to stand up and do
something so people realize that it doesn’t work that way. What does it take to
become these people that have this courage? During several years the colored
people have lived among the white people without being treated the same way.
What makes these people different from us? Why do they not deserve the same
life that anyone else do? During the 20^th Century there were people
that treated the colored people like they were some kind of disease. People who
stood up against them were people with a strong will but the people that didn’t
do anything about it were guilty because they didn’t do anything to stop what
was going on. Rosa Parks is a woman who became a hero all over the world
because of her action. By simply
refusing to give her seat up and following her own will, Rosa Parks became a
woman who many saw as a hero for the nation.

The society during the 20^th Century was cruel, people lived among
each other with fear. The White people feared that the colored people would become
one of them and the colored people feared that they wouldn’t be able to live
the life that they wanted. Why wanting to live with this fear? No one wants to
live with a fear of something. Rosa Parks was a woman who took a stand for the
colored people and showed everyone that she was done living in fear. The fact
that she was a woman made her braver, because women in those days had a hard
time achieving things.  Rosa Parks will
always be known as a true American hero as Senator Ted Kennedy once said.  (BBC News).

Half a Century ago Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white
man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. But the worst thing was that she wasn’t
sitting in the area “Whites only”, which made her furious when a white man told
her to move. When she didn’t, the bus driver called the police who arrested
her.  This action changed the course of
the American history and she became known as the “mother of the civil rights
movement”. According to the Guardian the colored people responded to this act
with a bus boycott led by Martin Luther King. (Guardian) “I have learned over
the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what
must be done does away with fear.” (brainyquote.com) Rosa Parks said this and I
think it shows her feelings that she had during her actions on the bus.

Everyone knows who Rosa Parks was, as she is a big part of the American
History. She has become a role model for many people or a hero that people look
up to and they wish that they have the same nerve as her. The fact that she was
one of the persons that got America to realize that the things that was going
one was insane, made her a person that people believed in. I look up to her as
a woman with power and I would do anything to have her courage. I think she
change many people’s way of seeing things and with that I don’t mean the way
everyone saw colored people as something else, I think she got many people to realize
that things don’t just happen. If you want something to happen you have to be
the one to take the first step, or else nothing will happen. Follow your own
will don’t listen or care what other people think or say.

We all wish that we are free to say or do whatever we want to. But then
why is it so many people that judge other for their behavior or for what they
say. If we continue like that nobody will have courage enough to express their
feelings anymore. I know I feel that way, when someone laughs at me for
something I have done. I don’t want to do that again, no one wants to be
humiliated. But when I think about Rosa Parks and remember what she did, she
can give me strength to do something. I think that if she can, I can. Rosa
Parks is not only America’s heroine, she is mine too.

Louise Leijonhufvud