US President-elect Obama owes all he has achieved to a black woman. She was the one who first walked on the path that would take him to the White House. No, she is not his mother, his grandmother or any of his relatives. Instead, she is a common black woman. Her story is known by every American and by all those who have been following up on the black movement in the US. On December 1, 1955, Mrs. Rosa Parks was going to work. She was a tailor. As usual, she took the bus. She knew that buses at the time were divided between black and white. The first ten seats were exclusively for the white and no black man or woman was allowed to sit there, even if one of those seats were empty. When Rose got on the bus, she counted the seats and sat down on the eleventh one. The first ten seats were filled immediately. When a white man got on the bus and found no place empty, she asked her to get up and leave her seat to him. She felt extremely offended and she vowed she would not stand up, no matter what. The bus driver tried to persuade her to leave the seat, but in vain. She stuck to that seat until she was eventually forced to leave it to the white man. From that day on, this episode passed from mouth to mouth. On that day and in that place, the African-American Civil Rights Movement was born. It started when clergyman Martin Luther King announced the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama, southern United States. The bus where Mrs. Parks' incident occurred was indeed a Montgomery. The black responded to Martin Luther King's call and they all stopped getting on those busses, so much so that the company eventually failed. This is the woman who paved the way for Obama and for Martin Luther King, as well. Without her firm stance, black Americans would have had nothing to rally around. Without her insisting on sitting on that bus, no one would have realized that the black were offended every day only because God created them with a black skin. Without her, the black would have been in the US but would have actually been prevented from living a decent life. Without her, the dream Martin Luther King talked about would never have come true. Indeed, he spoke to the crowd precisely after that episode and said out loud that he had a dream. This dream was nothing impossible. He just wanted black and white to live as equal citizens, with the same rights and duties. This was of course strange, astonishing and rejected and Martin Luther King eventually paid the price with his own life in 1968, as he was shot because of this dream he had believed in and fought for. From Alabama in the south, in 1955, started Obama's march which has ended in the White House, in the US capital, in 2008. Between these two steps stands a woman, but she is not the only one who has stood next to Obama, even though he had not even born yet at the time. Indeed, there have been six other men and they are the starting point and the basis of Obama's victory. Strangely, though, they were not black. How? This is indeed an exciting story to be continued.
