Imagine the conflicted feelings of a black Southerner as 1955 drew to a close. A new world seemed struggling to be born, now that the Supreme Court had strengthened its year-old Brown v. Board school desegregation decree in May by demanding compliance “with all deliberate speed.” Yet in August, progress came to a gruesome halt. The savage murder in Mississippi of 14-year-old Emmett Till for a hint of flirtation with a white woman, along with the instant acquittal of his killers, showed that the old world of segregation and lynching refused to die. On December 1, with mutilated Emmett Till on her mind, 42-year-old Rosa Parks, ordered by a white bus driver to give up her seat to a white passenger, as Montgomery, Alabama, law required, firmly refused. She was, she said, “tired of giving in.” The driver called the cops. Her mug shot radiates quiet contempt.