Posting this excerpt as is from the book 'Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking' by Susan Cain.
Montgomery, Alabama. December 1, 1955. Early evening. A public bus pulls to a stop and a sensibly dressed woman in her forties gets on. She carries herself erectly, despite having spent the day bent over an ironing board in a dingy basement tailor shop at the Montgomery Fair department store. Her feet are swollen, her shoulders ache. She sits in the 1st row of the Colored section and watches quietly as the bus fills with riders. Until the driver orders her to give her seat to a white passenger.
The woman utters a single word that ignites one of the most important civil rights protests of the twentieth century, one word that helps America find its better self.
