Who Did Rosa Parks Inspire to Stand Agains Segregation

Rosa Parks (1913—2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama charabanc in 1955. Her actions inspired the leaders of the local Black community to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Led by a young Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the boycott lasted more than a year—during which Parks not coincidentally lost her job—and ended only when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional. Over the adjacent half-century, Parks became a nationally recognized symbol of dignity and forcefulness in the struggle to cease entrenched racial segregation.

WATCH: Rosa Parks: Mother of a Movement on HISTORY Vault

Rosa Parks' Early Life

Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. She moved with her parents, James and Leona McCauley, to Pino Level, Alabama, at age 2 to reside with Leona's parents. Her brother, Sylvester, was born in 1915, and presently afterward that her parents separated.

Rosa's female parent was a instructor, and the family valued didactics. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, at age xi and eventually attended high school at that place, a laboratory schoolhouse at the Alabama State Teachers' College for Negroes. She left at sixteen, early in 11th grade, because she needed to care for her dying grandmother and, shortly thereafter, her chronically sick mother. In 1932, at 19, she married Raymond Parks, a cocky-educated man 10 years her senior who worked every bit a barber and was a long-time member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He supported Rosa in her efforts to earn her high-school diploma, which she ultimately did the following year.

READ MORE: Before the Bus, Rosa Parks Was a Sexual Assault Investigator

Rosa Parks: Roots of Activism

Raymond and Rosa, who worked as a seamstress, became respected members of Montgomery'due south big African American community. Co-existing with white people in a metropolis governed past "Jim Crow" (segregation) laws, however, was fraught with daily frustrations: Blackness people could nourish only certain (junior) schools, could drink just from specified water fountains and could borrow books simply from the "Black" library, amid other restrictions.

Although Raymond had previously discouraged her out of fear for her safety, in Dec 1943, Rosa also joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and became chapter secretary. She worked closely with affiliate president Edgar Daniel (Due east.D.) Nixon. Nixon was a railroad porter known in the city every bit an advocate for Black people who wanted to register to vote, and besides as president of the local branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union.

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested

On Th, December 1, 1955, the 42-year-old Rosa Parks was commuting home from a long day of work at the Montgomery Fair department store by double-decker. Black residents of Montgomery often avoided municipal buses if possible because they plant the Negroes-in-back policy and so demeaning. Nonetheless, 70 pct or more riders on a typical solar day were Black, and on this day Rosa Parks was ane of them.

Segregation was written into law; the front of a Montgomery bus was reserved for white citizens, and the seats backside them for Black citizens. However, it was only by custom that bus drivers had the authority to ask a Black person to give up a seat for a white rider. There were contradictory Montgomery laws on the books: One said segregation must be enforced, but another, largely ignored, said no person (white or Black) could be asked to surrender a seat fifty-fifty if there were no other seat on the bus available.

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Nevertheless, at ane signal on the route, a white man had no seat because all the seats in the designated "white" section were taken. So the commuter told the riders in the four seats of the starting time row of the "colored" department to stand, in effect adding another row to the "white" section. The iii others obeyed. Parks did not.

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired," wrote Parks in her autobiography, "but that isn't truthful. I was not tired physically… No, the merely tired I was, was tired of giving in."

Eventually, two constabulary officers approached the stopped bus, assessed the situation and placed Parks in custody.

READ MORE: The MLK Graphic Novel That Inspired Generations of Civil Rights Activists

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Although Parks used her i phone call to contact her husband, word of her arrest had spread quickly and E.D. Nixon was there when Parks was released on bail later that evening. Nixon had hoped for years to find a courageous Blackness person of unquestioned honesty and integrity to become the plaintiff in a case that might become the test of the validity of segregation laws. Sitting in Parks' home, Nixon convinced Parks—and her husband and mother—that Parks was that plaintiff. Another thought arose as well: The Black population of Montgomery would boycott the buses on the day of Parks' trial, Monday, Dec 5. Past midnight, 35,000 flyers were being mimeographed to be sent home with Black schoolchildren, informing their parents of the planned boycott.

On December five, Parks was found guilty of violating segregation laws, given a suspended sentence and fined $x plus $4 in court costs. Meanwhile, Black participation in the boycott was much larger than even optimists in the community had predictable. Nixon and some ministers decided to take advantage of the momentum, forming the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to manage the boycott, and they elected Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.–new to Montgomery and just 26 years old—as the MIA's president.

As appeals and related lawsuits wended their style through the courts, all the way upwards to the U.South. Supreme Courtroom, the Montgomery Jitney Cold-shoulder engendered anger in much of Montgomery's white population as well every bit some violence, and Nixon's and Dr. King's homes were bombed. The violence didn't deter the boycotters or their leaders, however, and the drama in Montgomery continued to gain attending from the national and international press.

On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional; the cold-shoulder concluded December xx, a day later on the Courtroom's written guild arrived in Montgomery. Parks—who had lost her job and experienced harassment all year—became known equally "the mother of the civil rights motility."

READ MORE: Rosa Parks' Life After the Bus Was No Easy Ride

Rosa Parks'due south Life After the Boycott

Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the cold-shoulder, Parks, forth with her married man and mother, eventually decided to motion to Detroit, where Parks' brother resided. Parks became an authoritative aide in the Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr. in 1965, a mail she held until her 1988 retirement. Her hubby, blood brother and mother all died of cancer between 1977 and 1979. In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Plant for Self-Development, to serve Detroit's youth.

In the years following her retirement, she traveled to lend her support to ceremonious-rights events and causes and wrote an autobiography, "Rosa Parks: My Story." In 1999, Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor the U.s. bestows on a civilian. (Other recipients have included George Washington, Thomas Edison, Betty Ford and Mother Teresa.) When she died at age 92 on October 24, 2005, she became the outset adult female in the nation's history to lie in honor at the U.Southward. Capitol.

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Source: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/rosa-parks

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