Where does the buck stop? Where do you put your foot down and say, "No more!"
Every time I put my foot down, it seems that someone tells me it is coming down on their toes. My values and sense of self-preservation get me into "trouble" all the time. Will I play the victim, and let someone cheat me or lie for them when they ask me to? Or will I refuse and bring a load of shite down on my head? In the long run, sticking to my truth has turned out better. The shite would come down no matter what I did, I finally realized. Just different shite. So I started picking the people in my life much more carefully, and mercilessly cutting out those who would use me for their own purposes. It has been rocky going and has taken years. I am now comfortable with myself, though, and have nothing to prove to anyone.
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I only recently heard the story of Claudette Colvin. Congress of Racial Equality - Claudette Colvin
She was a 15-year-old student in Montgomery, Alabama and became one of the first to sit in the front of the bus despite the segregation law in effect in 1955. Because of Claudette and three other women in the Browder v. Gayle case, the pebbles started rolling that resulted in Rosa Parks being chosen as a credible symbol for the later bus boycott.
What you probably don't realize is that the Rosa Parks incident was not the first act of protest against the Montgomery transit system, as a number of mostly unheralded African-America women in Montgomery also refused to yield their bus seats to white patrons, months before Parks did in 1955. Their collective actions, combined with an important legal action that built on the famous Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954, played a vital role in taking down the wall of segregation that was built upon the 1896 Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson.
The Colvin case, Douglas Brinkley wrote in [Rosa] Parks' biography, "proved a good dress rehearsal for the real drama shortly to come."
The African-American community needed a citizen whose character was unimpeachable, a "pillar of the community." Nine months later, Parks - unbeknownst to her - would become that person.
Claudette Colvin is a perfect example of someone who challenged an injustice without thinking of the consequences, positive or negative. She had paid for her ticket, and she felt she deserved to sit down. To be honest, she made me feel better about all the times I have done the same and paid a price. And felt so angry when no one stood up for me. And saw things change. That was often my only reward, and I have seen it happen several times when I have refused to compromise myself. It formed a space for change.
Who's your little buddy?
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