Although the civil rights movement did not begin with Rosa Parks, her refusal to give up her seat on a public bus in Montgomery certainly provided a cornerstone to the protests already mounting across the South. Not just the South, but an entire nation.

Wednesday was the 55th anniversary of that event, which also gave rise to a practically unknown young minister, Martin Luther King Jr.

While we remember Parks, we should not forget those who went before her.

For example, T.R.M. Howard led the Regional Council of Negro Leadership in 1952 in a successful boycott of gas stations in Mississippi because they did not provide restrooms for blacks.

In 1947 Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The Committee of Racial Equality, which later would become the Congress of Racial Equality, was founded in 1942.

In 1951 Harry Moore, an NAACP leader, is killed and his wife, Harriette Moore, a schoolteacher is wounded when their home in Mims, Fla. is bombed.

In 1954 the Supreme Court rules in Brown v. Board of Education that public school segregation violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Parks gives us much to remember, but it is also time to reflect on those events before her action.