Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Rosa parks life and legacy
Racism in America during the 1920s to 30s
Racism During the 1930's
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Rosa parks life and legacy
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks is an extraordinary person because she stood up against racism and stood up for herself. It was even harder for her because she is a woman, and in those days, things were much harder for woman. Rosa Parks hated the ways of her life. She had always dreamed of having freedom in her life. As she grew up, she went through different experiences that gave her courage and strength.
One day, Rosa Parks had so much courage and strength that when her bus arrived to pick her up, she got on the bus, put her money in the slot, and sat in the front of the bus. Black people were supposed to sit in the back. The bus driver told her to move to the back, but she just sat there and refused to move. The driver called the police and they arrested Rosa Parks. The next day, Raymond
Parks went to pick up Rosa from jail. When they got home, Rosa spoke about her time in jail. She had stood up to get a drink of water and the guard told her the drinking fountain was only for white people. This made her furious.
On December 5, 1955 Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. and JoAnn Robinson looked out of their windows, and stood on street corners watching all of the yellow buses drive by. There were hardly any black riders since Rosa Park's arrest. It was a miracle. People stopped riding the buses all because of Rosa
Parks.
Soon, the police were informed of the people standing on the street corners watching the buses drive by. The police watched the streets to make sure that the black people were not bothering the other bus riders. They tried guarding the bus stops. The police failed and the boycott was a success. A few months later, Rosa Parks once again started to climb aboard a bus. She stopped when she noticed a sign that read, "People don't ride the bus today. Don't ride the bus for freedom."
Finally the rules for riding the buses were changed. 1. Black and white people could sit wherever they wanted to sit. 2. Bus drivers were to respect all riders.
3. Black people were now allowed to apply for driver positions.
A lot of people wrote hate mail to Rosa Parks.
Rosa Parks Call to Adventure occurred On December 1,1955, while she was sitting on a Montgomery bus after a long day of work. There was a white passenger that boarded the bus and due to the whites section being full Mrs.Parks and three other passengers was asked to move their seats to the back of the bus. The three other passengers complied with the bus driver but Mrs.Parks did not. Being that Mrs.Parks had put up with discrimination and prejudice her whole life she decided to answer the call and stand up for for herself. This was the start of a whole new
Life - Rosa Parks was born only a month before world war one started in Europe on February 4, 1913. Parks mother worked as a school teacher in Tuskegee, Alabama. James McCauley, Rosa's dad was a carpenter. They lived in Tuskegee and owned farmland of their own. After Sylvester was born, Rosa's little brother, her father left them and went off to live in another town. He had been cheated out of his farmland by a white man and couldn't support the family any longer. Rosa her mother and her brother then moved to live with her grandparents on a farm in Pinelevel, which lay between Tuskegee and Montgomery, Alabama. It was a small plot of land, but it kept them all fed. From this point on Rosa was mainly brought up by her Grandparents with the assistance of her mother. Rosa gave up school when she came close to graduating, around the same time Rosa got married. Raymond Parks married Rosa McCauley December 18, 1932. He was a barber from Wedowee County, Alabama. He had little formal education but a thirst for knowledge. Her husband, Raymond Parks, encouraged her to finish her courses. In 1934 she received her diploma from Alabama State College. She was happy that she completed her education but had little hope of getting a better job. When Rosa had finished school she was lucky enough to get a job as a seamstress in a local sewing factory. Prior to the bus incident Rosa was still fighting. She had run-ins with bus drivers and was evicted from buses. Parks recalls the humiliation: "I didn't want to pay my fare and then go around the back door, because many times, even if you did that, you might not get on the bus at all. They'd probably shut the door, drive off, and leave you standing there."
protest of an incident that occurred on a public bus. Rosa parks had broken the
On December 5, 1955, thousands of African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama walked, carpooled, or hitchhiked to work in an act of rebellion against segregation on buses. This bus boycott was not the first of its kind – black citizens of Baton-Rouge, Louisiana had implemented the same two years prior – but the bus boycott in Montgomery was a critical battle of the Civil Rights Movement. Though the original intent of the boycott was to economically cripple the bus system until local politicians agreed to integrate the city’s buses, the Montgomery Bus Boycott impacted the fabric of society in a much deeper way. Instead of only changing the symptoms of a much larger problem, this yearlong protest was the first step in transforming the way all Americans
It all started on December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks was on her way home from a long day at work. After she sat down and the bus was ready to depart, the bus driver asked the first row of African Americans to get up because there was a white man who didn't have a seat. Everyone got up except Parks, because she didn't want to give in and let them win. “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired,” wrote Parks in her autobiography, “but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically… No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”(history.com) Parks was done with being treated badly and tired of being discriminated against, she just wanted her rights back, according to
either get a ride or to have someone take her girls for her. She was forced however to leave the
On December 1st, 1955, Rosa had started the Montgomery Bus Boycott. On that day, she was asked to moved to the back of a Alabama bus for a white citizen to sit down. She refused. Little do people know, twelve years earlier, blacks were allowed to pay at the front of the bus but were not allowed to walk past whites to get to their segregated section. So, they were required to get off the bus and re-enter through the back entrance. So one rainy day, the driver allowed Parks to walk past to get to a seat, purposely sitting in a white citizens, acting as if she was picking up her purse. Then making the driver so angry he forced Parks to get off and walk 5 miles home in the rain. “I’d see the bus pass every day. But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first
Just think, it all would have never happened if one person, Mrs. Rosa Parks, would have let the bus driver trample over her and not stand up for what she knows is right. In Martin Luther King Jr’s book, Stride Towards Freedom, he sums up the whole boycott very nicely. “The Story of Montgomery is the story of 50,000 Negroes who were willing to substitute tired feet for tired souls and walk the streets of Montgomery until the walls of segregation were finally battered by the forces of justice. ”5 End Notes 1Taylor Branch Parting the Water: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 (New York:
During this time period, Rosa Parks was known as “The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement”. Rosa Parks died on October 25, 2005 at age 92. Rosa parks felt that everyone should be free and everyone should have the same rights. Rosa Parks was able to read when she was little because she was born 50 years after slavery, in 1913. Her mother taught her to read when she was very little because she was a teacher (Interview with Rosa Parks). The school she went to was very strict about the way things were done. For example:
Rosa Parks was a member of the NAACP, lived in Montgomery Alabama, and rode the public bus system. In the south, during this time the buses were segregated which meant that black people had to ride in the back of the bus behind a painted line. White people entered the front of the bus and were compelled to sit in front of the painted line. Most buses at the time had more room for white riders who used the service less than the black ridership. Yet, they could not cross the line even if the seats in the front were empty (Brown-Rose, 2008). Rosa Parks made a bold statement when she sat in the “white section” of a Montgomery bus. She was asked to surrender her seat to a white man, but she did not move and was soon arrested. Her brave action started the Montgomery bus Boycott, with the help of the NAACP, none other than Dr. Martin Luther King’s leadership as part of the Montgomery Improvement Association. As its President, he was able spread the word quickly which brought national attention to the small town of Montgomery’s bus Boycott. The boycott was televised and brought so much attention that the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public transportation was unconstitutional; a success spurring a more
"Rosa Parks Biography - Facts, Birthday, Life Story - Biography.com." Famous Biographies & TV Shows - Biography.com. Web. 05 Jan. 2012. .
This American Revolutionary experience had a great impact on the eventual movement for women's rights. Previous to their rights movement, women, by law, were declared inferior to men, had no separate existence from their husbands and every one of their possessions, acquired or inherited, would be passed on to the ownership of her husband. The children in a marriage belonged to the father alone and the custody of the children if one was to get divorced, was usually given to him. If a woman's husband died, she would receive only the use of one third of his real estate. They could be beaten as long as the stick was no bigger than a man's thumb and single women were excluded from earning a living, with the exception in a few poorly paid trades.
Rosa Parks: My Story is an autobiography. Parks tells about her vital role in the struggle for equality. In detail this book explains how the civil rights movements started. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus, beginning the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott.
In 1955, African Americans were required by a Montgomery, Alabama city ordinance to sit in the back of all city buses. They had to give up their seats to white American riders if the front of the bus, which was reserved for whites, was full. On December 1, 1955, a few days before the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African American woman, refused to give up her seat to a white man on the Montgomery bus. When the white seats filled, the driver, J. Fred Blake, asked Rosa Parks and three other African Americans to vacate their seats.
When most people think about an eventful or memorable place, they almost certainly would not picture a bus. As we all know, buses are not exactly attractive. The design scheme is the same in almost every bus: rows and rows of brown seats, a thin black aisle down the middle of the bus, hundreds of hazy windows, and the big, lemon-yellow exterior. Not many people, I am sure, would consider buses to be an important part of their lives. However, if a person were to think about it, they would realize that they probably have had at least one memorable experience in their life that took place on a bus.