Rosa Parks 1913-2005
Civil Rights Pioneer
Rosa Parks has been called the “mother of the civil rights movement.” In December 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus to a white passenger. At the time, African Americans were forced to sit in the back of the bus, separate from whites.
Parks recognized the bus driver on that city bus. He had made her get off of his bus twelve years earlier when she refused to enter through the back door. This time, he told her that she would be arrested if she did not give up her seat. Parks refused to move. He stopped the bus and had her taken to police headquarters.
Parks was a teacher and a devoted church volunteer. She had never been arrested before. The African American community, led by a young preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr., supported her cause. African American bus riders in Montgomery stopped riding the buses. The bus company lost over 70 percent of its business. Less than a year later, the Supreme Court declared that forcing African Americans and whites to be separate was illegal.
Critical Thinking
What word would you use to describe Rosa Parks? Explain your answer.