By Donna Goss & Don Robertson
Co-Directors, Leadership Development Institute

Her action in Montgomery , Alabama on December 1, 1955 when she chose to sit on a bus where she deserved to sit and not surrender that seat when the law said she had to, was an act of great courage and lofty principles. Rosa was willing to challenge the process, the current thinking of the time, even at great risk to herself. She did not give a “I Have A Dream” speech to several hundred thousand people, but her stand for what she thought was right was the catalyst to inspire hundreds of thousands of people. She set the example for all of us and she did it in a way that championed Martin Luther King's message of protest without violence.

Leadership in action is not always bigger than life but it makes life bigger. Leaders are about making people or the environment around them better. It is not about them, it's about what they are trying to achieve. Rosa Parks wasn't trying to go down in history as a great leader. If that was her goal, don't you think we would have heard a lot more about her in the last 50 years? Don't you think she would have been looking for opportunities to get herself into the public's eye; running for political office or writing books or being on talk shows? Rosa Parks was about equality and fairness and helping others see the injustice in old standards. Rosa Parks was about making the world a better place. She is in the history books because of what she stood up for, not because she sat down.

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