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She didn’t take on the system. Other people did it in her name. I’m sure all she wanted to do was sit down.

I thought she was a secretary for the NAACP - and an activist. That she was hand picked for her age / gender and knew what going to transpire when took that "stand" (irony intended).

Can anyone else verify that?

Per Wikipedia . . .

"At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial equality. Nonetheless, she took her action as a private citizen "tired of giving in".

Nonetheless, her actions were as private citizen . . . . who just happened to take notes at NAACP meetings. But, one role has nothing to do with the other. Me thinks thou dost protest too much.

I draw a different conclusion from these two facts. I belive that she knew what she was doing. This belief has no bearing on whether I think the law was right/wrong. However, inventing storybook, Hollywood-esqe motives, gives a misleading spin on what really happened.

Rosa Parks was arrested and spent some time inside a jail cell. I do not think she was an activist, but there was some controversy. There were two other women that went before her, so she wasn't the first. One was an single mother and one may have been a prostitute, and Someone was looking for the perfect victim to make a hero of the civil rights movement.

Someone was looking for an angel figure to galvanize the civil rights movement, someone with a head for politics -- Richard Nixon. He decided that Rosa Parks, widow of a veteran, a working, older woman, who had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man, was the perfect image for the civil rights movement.

She wasn't the first to give up her seat, but Nixon knew we needed a shining hero with a halo to make this work. So he cheated and picked Mrs. Parks. Because Nixon, a Republican, wanted it to suceed and he knew how to play politics. Tricky Dick used his eeeeevil sneaky ways to eliminate the Jim Crow laws. I will always respect him for this.