Every Little Act Makes a Difference

    Were it not for the web-footed rodent and a haberdashery fad in eighth-century Europe, Minnesota might be a Canadian province today. The beaver, almost as much as the horse, helped shape the course of early American history. Some Mayflower colonists paid their passage with beaver pelts; and a good fur could bring an Indian three steel knives or a five-foot stack could bring a musket. But even more influential were the trappers and fur traders penetrating the great Northern wilderness between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, since it was their presence that helped hold the Near West against British expansion from the north; and it was their explorations that opened the heart of the nation to white settlement. These men, by making pelts the currency of the wilds, laid the base  for a new economy that quickly overwhelmed the old. And all because European men of mode simply had to wear a beaver hat.

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William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways (1982)

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     If it had not been for a forty-two year old woman and a small group of others in the twentieth-century America, America would not be the same place it is today. Rosa Parks, almost as normal as any other black, helped change the way all people viewed blacks. Some other activists stayed their ground on buses; but when Parks stayed seated as a white asked if she would sit in the back or at least move off the seat, the beginning of a revolution took place. But even more effective was the group and black president elected to lead the Montgomery Improvement Association fighting for the rights of black men and women, since it was Martin Luther that overwhelmed the hearts of many people even some white. His words, which encouraged the revolt of the blacks, brought the equality for a people that had been taken advantage of.  Thousands of folks died, but African Americans were finally free. And all because Rosa Parks of all the women in the world simply decided not to leave her seat on a bus.

                                                                                                                                                  ~Alayna~