Rosa Louise McCauley was an activist in the Civil rights movement, who the United States congress called the First Lady of civil rights and the mother of the freedom movement. By refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus on December 1st 1955 the black seamstress helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States. The leader of the local black community organised a bus boycott that began the day Parks was convicted of violating the segregation laws on December 5th
Rosa Parks is famous for fighting for the rights of dark skinned people to be equal to light skinned people. She is most famous for disobeying the law on December 1st 1955 she went against the law by not giving up her seat to a white man on a racially segregated bus. In America racial discrimination is huge and one of the biggest problems in today’s society. Dark skinned people did not have the same rights as light skinned people.
Rosa was of African descent, although one of her great grandfathers was of a Scottish and Irish descent and one of her great grandmother was a slave of Native American descent. Just outside the state capital Montgomery ,she grew up on a farm with her maternal grandparents mother and her younger brother Sylvester. They were all members of the African Methodist Episcopal church, a century old independent black domination founded by free blacks in Philadelphia in the early nineteenth century ,this could be where it all started for her.
By doing simple actions and not giving her seat to a light skinned person she helped others that were being discriminated have the courage to speak up to what they thought was right. In doing these actions other people joined in .in that same week 3 other dark skinned people were arrested for disobeying the segregation law and not tolerating racial discrimination. Eventually this made a massive impact on how dark skinned people were treated. Rosa parks along side martin Luther king are very important people in history because their actions had made the world almost rethink the way dark skinned people should be treated and how wrong the discrimination was. Parks recalled Going to elementary school in pine level where the school buses took the white students to their school but the blacks had to walk
The tipping point for parks was days before she was found guilty of disobeying segregation laws where a black man was caught flirting with a white woman and was brutally killed. In august 1955 a black teenager Emmett till was brutally murdered after flirting with a female white woman whilst he was visiting relatives in Mississippi, on November 27th 1955 four days before parks would make her stand on the bus she attended a mass meeting at Dexter avenue church in Montgomery that addressed the case as well as the recent murders of several other activists
“I’d see the bus pass everyday.. but to me that was just the way of life we had no choice but to just accept what was happening.”
“The bus was among the first ways I realised there was a black world and a white world”
Parks is one of the most influential people in history and has inspired today’s society and and influenced this generation and many generations in the future
After rosa park was arrested on December 1st 1955 a political and social riot began about segregation on buses and was also a campaign to stop the segregation. It lasted from 5th of December 1955 until 20th of December 1956. 381 days. In that time the Supreme Court dismissed the case 4 times eventually on the 5th time they opened the case on December 20th the Supreme Court decided to end racial segregation as well as the protest
Some people did not like the court changed the segregations and on January 10 1957 decided to bomb 4 baptists church and also targeted the bus boycott organisers Ralph Hutchinson and martin Luther king Jnr.
For the next 8 years countries and cities were de-segregating the buses
Facing continued harassment and threats during and after the boycott parks along with her husband and mother eventually decide to move to Detroit where parks brother was. Rosa got a job at Detroit office of congressman John confers Jnr. In 1965 a post she held until her 1988 retirement . Her husband , brother and mother all died of cancer between 1977 and 1979. In 1987 she co-founded the rosa and Raymond parks institute for self development to serve Detroit’s youth.
In the years following her retirement she traveled to lend her support to civil right events and causes and wrote a biography “rosa parks :my story”. In 1999 parks was awarded the congressional medal the highest honour the United States gives a civilian.