racial segregation<\/a> in public facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOn December 1, 1955, after a long day of ironing in the basement of the Montgomery Fair department store, Parks boarded a bus for home and sat down in the first row of the Colored section. When the driver ordered her to give up her seat, she simply said, \u201cNo\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The driver threatened to have her arrested, and she replied, \u201cYou may do that.\u201d A police officer arrived and asked her why she wouldn\u2019t move and she asked him in turn, \u201cWhy do you all push us around?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he said, \u201cbut the law is the law \u2026\u201d and he arrested her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized that Parks\u2019s quiet, unassuming nature plus her integrity and character made her a sympathetic and credible plaintiff for the lawsuit that ended bus segregation by order of the Supreme Court a year later. While King spoke for and promoted her, she remained humble and shunned the limelight. Yet she had taken considerable risk\u2014she was fired from her job and received death threats for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
News coverage of the Supreme Court order didn\u2019t even mention Parks\u2014the newspapers praised King and carried photos of boycott leaders standing in front of buses. Meanwhile, Parks was at home, caring for her mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In her brief autobiography Quiet Strength<\/em>, published in 2010, she again resisted the opportunity to claim any credit, instead citing the many who died in the civil rights struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSteve Wozniak<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The corporate teamwork environment marginalizes the contributions of introverts, who like to work alone<\/strong>. By contrast, the early Web allowed introverts to work independently on ideas and also share and build on the ideas of others. According to a study of the U.S., Australia, and the U.K., many of the earliest computer developers were introverts who worked alone but contributed to the greater good. For example, Apple\u2019s Steve Wozniak worked alone on a prototype PC, but he shared ideas with a group called the Homebrew Computer Club. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThis kind of solitary, intense focus on a passion is typical of creative people. Steve Wozniak compared himself to an artist, needing to work alone to control his creation. \u201cI don\u2019t believe anything really revolutionary has been invented by a committee,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Focus on a passion often starts in adolescence\u2014for instance, Wozniak was fascinated by electronics as a teenager and spent hours working on them alone. A 1995 study of 91 extremely creative people found that they were loners as adolescents because their passion made them different from their peers. Examples include author Madeleine L\u2019Engle and Charles Darwin. However, the kind of solitude that drives creativity and achievement is hard to come by in teams and open offices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Famous Introverts in Politics<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Former Vice President Al Gore, another one of the famous introverts, is another example of a leader whose conscience benefited society: long before most people cared about it, he engaged in a decades-long campaign to raise awareness of the danger posed by global warming. The welfare of society and even the planet may depend on the capabilities of highly sensitive people, as much as on those of bold doers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n