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Posts Tagged ‘rosa parks’

Sitting Down to Take a Stand

Tuesday, December 1st, 2015

December 1, 2015

Sixty years ago today, Rosa Parks decided she’d had enough. The African American seamstress, tired after a long day’s work, decided to break the law by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. A city law at the time required blacks to leave their seats in the next rows when all seats in the front rows were taken and other whites still wanted seats. Parks was arrested, triggering a boycott of the Montgomery bus system that lasted over a year. Her action helped bring about the civil rights movement in the United States.

Rosa Parks sits toward the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, soon after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that segregation on city buses was unconstitutional. Credit: © Underwood Archives/Getty Images

Rosa Parks sits toward the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, soon after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that segregation on city buses was unconstitutional. Credit: © Underwood Archives/Getty Images

“At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this. It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in,” Parks later reflected. Even before Parks’s arrest, Montgomery’s black leaders had been discussing a protest against racial segregation on the city’s buses. Parks allowed the leaders to use her arrest to spark a boycott of the bus system. The leaders formed an organization to run the boycott. Martin Luther King, Jr.—then a Baptist minister in Montgomery—was chosen as president. From Dec. 5, 1955, to Dec. 20, 1956, thousands of blacks refused to ride Montgomery’s buses. Their boycott ended when the Supreme Court of the United States declared segregated seating on the city’s buses unconstitutional. The boycott’s success encouraged other mass protests demanding civil rights for blacks.

Rosa Louise McCauley was born on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. She attended Alabama State Teachers College. In 1932, she married Raymond Parks, a barber. She held a variety of jobs and, in 1943, became one of the first women to join the Montgomery Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She served as the organization’s secretary from 1943 to 1956.

Parks lost her job as a seamstress as a result of the Montgomery boycott. She moved to Detroit in 1957. From 1967 to 1988, she worked on the Detroit staff of John Conyers, Jr., a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1979, she won the Spingarn Medal for her work in civil rights. In 1996, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1999, she was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal. Parks died on Oct. 24, 2005. A statue of Parks was dedicated at Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol in 2013.

Additional World Book articles:

  • Colvin, Claudette
  • Desmond, Viola
  • Emmett Till case
  • Million Man March
  • Detroit (1994) - A Back in Time article

Tags: african american history, african americans, alabama, boycott, civil rights movement, martin luther king jr, montgomery, montgomery bus boycott, racial segregation, rosa parks, segregation
Posted in Current Events, Government & Politics, History, People, Race Relations | Comments Off

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