Through The Eyes of Three

Over the years, discrimination has slowly, but surely become an inevitable product of human nature because inequalities in social and economic status occur and thus, humans have become predisposed to discriminate and be discriminated against.

Although bias, discrimination and prejudice have been slowly hardwired into our brains over the years – people still hold the ability to change how the world thinks, three key individuals challenged the status quo (Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu) forever changing our perspectives on the world.

By going against the status quo and refusing to give up her seat, Rosa Parks launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a simple act by one young woman helped set the wheels of the civil rights movement in motion. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a sewer from Montgomery, Alabama, got on a bus to head home from work. Despite the fact that she resented the seating plan of the bus, she went to the back of the bus, which was the only spot where blacks were permitted to sit. Furthermore, blacks were required by law to surrender their seats in the back if a white individual asked.

On that decisive day, when the front (white) area of the bus became full, a white man asked Parks to surrender her seat in the back, and she adamantly refused. When she declined to surrender her seat, the bus driver threatened to call the police, yet she held her ground. The Montgomery Improvement Project (MIA, established by Martin Luther King) kept boycotting the transports until the isolation laws were changed. The primary goal of the boycott was to end isolation in the Montgomery transport system and also to encourage hiring of black bus drivers in Montgomery. Almost the entire black population of Montgomery be...

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...oned racial segregation has been prohibited. Everybody in South Africa now has an equivalent open door at home and at work to live agreeable, gainful lives. Nelson Mandela is one of the world's actual opportunity contenders, and his life and individual triumphs will be recalled long after the world has overlooked the wrongs of Apartheid.

The evidence is overwhelming: racism and discrimination has existed within our society for far too long. People continue to stand down in the hopes that somebody else will do something. By challenging the discrimination on public transportation, Rosa Parks ignited a full fledges movement that eventually forced authorities to change segregation laws. By leading the March To Washington and preaching “The American Dream”, Martin Luther King woke up the masses, which eventually saw President Kennedy signing civil rights legislation.