I had felt for a long time, that if I was ever told to get up so a white person could sit, that I would refuse to do so.

Rosa Parks is describing her state of mind before her arrest on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, when she refused a bus driver’s order to give up her seat under the city’s Jim Crow segregation rules. Parks had long been involved in civil-rights work (including with the NAACP) and had experienced repeated humiliations on segregated public transportation. The remark frames her action not as a sudden impulse but as a decision she had contemplated over time—an inner resolve formed through years of daily indignities and political awareness. Her refusal became the catalyst for the Montgomery Bus Boycott and a pivotal moment in the modern Civil Rights Movement.

The quote emphasizes deliberation and moral preparedness. Parks presents her refusal as the culmination of sustained reflection: she had already drawn a personal line against enforced racial deference. The phrasing underscores how segregation operated through routine, coercive demands for Black people to yield space and dignity, and how resistance could begin with a single, ordinary encounter. It also counters narratives that reduce her act to fatigue or spontaneity; instead, it highlights agency, principle, and the quiet courage of deciding in advance not to cooperate with injustice when the moment arrives.