#ThrowBackToday: On Rosa Parks' birth anniversary recounting the power of the word, 'No!'

Who knew that a woman refusing to give up her bus seat would spark a revolution. Yet, when that woman is a much-discriminated black woman in the USA of the 1955s, it made sense that her simple 'No' would propel the civil rights movement. This force of a woman, who was born on February 4, 1913, was placed in custody and was released on bail the same evening of her defiance. Her name was Rosa Parks.

Most people attributed Parks' refusal to give up her seat, which was the mandate as the seats were racially-segregated, to a long day at work. But in her eponymous autobiography, she stated “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically… No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

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It was under the aegis of this that the Montgomery Bus Boycott began and racial discrimination was brought under sharp focus. She continues to be an American icon who stood her ground and by saying no, changed the course of history.