Rosa Parks was a seamstress by trade. In 1955, she was active in the NAACP and the Montgomery Improvement Association, working to improve civil rights in her community. Her Dec. 1st action of refusing to give her seat in the Black section of the bus to a white man was calculated, but not planned for that time. “I got on it to go home,” Parks said. Parks’ arrest was supposed to spark a one-day boycott. After Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. made a speech asking people to join in the fight against segregation, nearly 20,000 passengers boycotted Montgomery’s buses regularly for 381days. And that was just the beginning, as her actions sparked the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
1. What Rosa Parks did is called “moral courage.” Why do you think she needed to be so brave?
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2. What words or phrases would you use to describe moral courage? What are some historic or recent examples of moral courage or moral cowardice?
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3. What things in your life require moral courage?
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4. Is peer pressure a strong influence in your school? Does it take courage to resist peer pressure?
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5. Can you think of a situation where you wanted to do the right thing, but found yourself unable to do it? What prevented you from acting according to your values?
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6. Describe a time when it was difficult to do the right thing. What helped you live up to your values?
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