This column was one of the more emotional columns I’ve written for the Legal Intelligencer. I am writing this sitting in my hotel room at the Dearborn Inn in Michigan, after visiting the Henry Ford Museum of Innovation which houses the historical bus that Rosa Parks rode when she was arrested for violating a Montgomery, Alabama, ordinance requiring her to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger. Parks’ act of defiance sparked one of the largest social movements in history, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and helped inspire a crusade that led Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, among other things, bars discrimination on race, color, religion, national origin and sex.

I had the privilege and honor of sitting in that very seat today and was completely overcome with emotion over the courage Parks had then, how far we’ve come since and, how far we have yet to go in the fight for true equality for all.