Freedom Writers Violence

Civil rights activist Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. At the age of two she moved to her grandparents' farm in Pine Level, Alabama with her mother and younger brother, Sylvester. At the age of 11 she enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, a private school founded by liberal-minded women from the northern United States. The school's philosophy of self-worth was consistent with Leona McCauley's advice to "take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were." Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus spurred a city-wide boycott. The city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift the law requiring segregation on public buses. Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks - Rosa Parks is considered the mother of Civil Rights Movement. She had been a member of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) before she became a huge issue throughout the nation in the 1950s. On Dec. 1, 1955, she refused to give up her seat to a white man who asked her to get up for him. Parks was tired that day and did not feel like giving up her seat. She was arrested for disobeying orders to go to the back of the bus. This caused the Montgomery Bus Boycott. After a year, the Supreme Court supported the court order to integrate the buses in Montgomery. This also sparked the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s.

“Freedom Writers” is a powerful film that is based on a true story about a teacher named Erin Gruwell, who struggles to connect with her students to make them believe that they can succeed in life, and to show them that their lives, experiences, and knowledge is valuable, all while attempting to unify them and to overcome racial segregation and gang violence that is part of their daily lives. Gruwell focuses on introducing the concepts of discipline and obedience in her classroom. She gradually begins to earn their trust and buys them composition books to record their diaries, in which they talk about their experiences of being abused, seeing their friends die, and being evicted; Gruwell refers to the composition books as “The Freedom Writers Diary.”

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, one of the leaders of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] refused to give up her seat to a white person on a segregated city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, despite being reprimanded by the driver (Schulke 166). Montgomery, Alabama was known for its terrible treatment of blacks. The buses in particular had been a source of tension between the city and black citizens for many years (Schulke, 167). As a result of refusing to give up her seat, Rosa Parks was arrested. Rosa Parks' popularity among the black community, proved to be the spark that ignited the non-violent Civil Rights Movement (Norrell 2).

On Thursday evening December 1, 1955, Rosa boards a Montgomery City Bus to go home after a long day working as a seamstress. She walks back to the section for blacks, and takes a seat. The law stated that they could sit there if no White people were standing. Rosa parks never liked segregation rules and has been fighting against them for more than ten years in the NAACP, but until then had never broke any of the unjust rules. As the bus stops at more places, more white people enter the bus, all the seats in the “White Only” section was filled and the bus driver orders Rosa’s row to move to the back of the bus, they all moved, accept Rosa. She was arrested and fined for violating a city regulation. This act of defiance began a movement that ended legal Segregation in America, and made her an inspiration to freedom devoted people everywhere.

The storyline of the movie takes place between 1992-1995. Beginning with scenes from the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Hilary Swank plays the role of Erin Gruwell, a new, excited schoolteacher who leaves the safety of her hometown, Newport Beach, to teach at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, a formerly high achieving school which has recently had an integration program put in place. Her enthusiasm is quickly challenged when she realizes that her classes are all "at-risk" students, also known as "un-teachable", and not the eager students she was expecting. The students segregate themselves into racial groups in the classroom, fights break out, and eventually most

Rosa Parks once said, “Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome.” Rosa Parks was an African- American women in Montgomery, Alabama, who believed in civil rights for African-Americans. It was a time of segregation, the separation of blacks and whites. For instance, blacks were required to sit in the back of the bus, and white people sat in the front of the bus.

The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement Rosa Parks is one of the most famous people in the history of the American Civil Rights movement, for her refusal to “move to the back of the bus” on December 1, 1955. Although her moment of protest was not a planned event , it certainly proved to be a momentous one. The nature of Rosa Park’s protest, the response of the authorities of Montgomery, the tactics adopted by the civil rights leaders in Montgomery, and the role eventually played by Federal authority, were all aspects of this particular situation that were to be repeated again and again in the struggle for equality of race. Rosa Parks’ action, and the complex combination of events that followed, in some measure, foreshadowed a great deal of

Just over a year later Southeast of Kansas on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, boarded a segregated bus and took her seat in the front of the colored section. When a white passenger boarded the bus and the whites-only section was full Rosa was ordered to give up her seat; she refused. When she was arrested the community became uneasy. This event sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the two events became the foundation of the Civil Rights Movement.

The bus was separated into a black and white section, the white section was located in the front. Rosa was sitting on the bus in the front of the black section when a white man came aboard. This man went to go sit down in the white section of the bus, but the section was full. The man then told the driver, the driver in a brief sweep ordered Rosa to move to the back of the bus. When Rosa refused, she defied a southern custom, moreover, she was then arrested. After her arrest the black community started the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The community stopped riding the public bus system until they were treated equally and with respect. To sum up the boycott lasted for more than a year, it ended on December 20,1956. “Martin Luther King Jr. was instrumental in leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott”(Burner and Haney). Dr. King knew that this was something that needed to be handled. After the bus boycott Rosa Parks was known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement” (Hare). Rosa never expected to become famous after this. All she wanted to do was get home because she was tired from work. “I didn’t get on the bus with the intention of being arrested,” she said later. “I got on the bus with the intention of going home”(Hare). Yet after everything Rosa knew when she refused to move, that she had just started her very own

She is believed to have started the main struggle of these civil rights movement. She experienced difficulty in completing her education due to the strict regulations for the black children. The black children were meant to study for only five moths in a year and the rest of the year they spent time in the cotton fields as laborers. Rosa graduated from high school after she got married to Raymond parks[7]. This sparked her efforts to fight racial injustice. She joined National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Montgomery chapter as the only woman. She was very instrumental member of this organization and was elected secretary. Her active involvement in National Association of Advanced Colored People led to her arrest on 1955[8]. Rosa’s life as an African American continued to face challenges. The mistreatment she received from the whites while she was in a bus made her to launch a huge boycott of using Montgomery buses by the Afro-Americans. She decided to organize this boycott after she got arrested for refusing to give out her seat to a white passenger in the bus. The boycott lasted for 381 days prompting her to be absorbed by the Montgomery Improvement Association which was formed by Martin Luther King Jr[9].

In the movie, The Freedom Writers Mrs. Erin Gruwell (Hillary Swank) plays a role of a dedicated teacher who did all she could, to help her students learn to respect themselves and each other. She has little idea of what she's getting into when she volunteers to be an English teacher at a newly integrated high school in Long Beach, California. Her students were divided along racial lines and had few aspirations beyond basic survival. Mrs. Gruwell was faced with a big challenge when a group of freshmen students showed her nothing but disrespect which made it hard for her to communicate, teach and understand them. However, Erin Gruwell was determined that no matter the cost she would teach her students not only

Rosa was the first African-American female who stood up against racism and fought for female rights. She was the first ever to refuse to give up her seat to a white man on the bus and was arrested for it. Rosa made history and paved the way to the 381 days Montgomery bus boycott in which all of this has started. Finally, this came through and initiated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Rosa Parks is a well-known historical figure who famously refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery in 1955 and has been given the title ‘the mother of the civil rights movement’. The civil rights movement was a national effort made by both black people, and supporters of equal rights during the 1950’s and 60’s with the aim to move away from segregation and towards equality. The segregation laws became known as the ‘Jim Crow’ laws to many people as he was a black man who was discriminated against in the ‘minstrel shows’, comedy acts performed by black people, or white people in ‘blackface’. There are many arguments surrounding this era such as the fact that Rosa Parks is a more remembered figure than others, who arguably

One of the Champions of the American Civil Rights Movement was Rosa Parks. A native of Tuskegee Alabama, she was said by some to be the mother of the African American Civil Rights Movement. Making a living as a seamstress, she was highly involved in the local efforts of the N.A.A.C.P. (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) as well as exceedingly active in her church congregation, Rosa Parks would become infamous for simply refusing to be treated differently because of the color of her skin. Aboard the Cleveland Avenue bus coming home from work on the evening of December 1st 1955, an already weary Rosa Parks was instructed by the bus driver to surrender her seat to a Caucasian man who had boarded the bus subsequent to her. When she refused to do so, the police were summoned and she consequentially was arrested. This was her first time to be under arrest, but she conducted herself in a professional and dignified manner despite the extreme injustice she was being served (Johnson 212). Jo Ann Robinson called Rasa Parks a woman of "high morals and a strong character". She was exactly what the N.A.A.C.P. needed for a plaintiff in their proposed civil suit against the bus company (Marcus 260).