ABSTRACT
Gandhi broke an unjust law by making salt. Rosa Parks broke one by staying seated in a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Gandhi planned a mass march. Rosa’s colleagues organized a mass boycott of the city buses. They printed and distributed 35,000 leaflets announcing the mass action, Black ministers preached boycott to thousands, and on Monday almost every Black rider stayed off the buses. Once the mainstream media picked up the story, a mass movement for civil rights developed and on August 6, 1965 Parks watched President Johnson sign the Voting Rights Act into law. Focus on the Voting Rights Act and the large-scale change in the U.S. that Parks’ seemingly small action brought about looks like a deed done by the people at “the top.” In fact it is one more example of education’s amplification of the actions of the people at “the bottom.”
