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Rosa Parks's Impact On The Civil Rights Movement

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For the majority of history in the United States, particularly in the southern United States, the hierarchy of white superiority remained a dominant and controlling reality. This mythology of white superiority went unchallenged for decades. However, as race relations and tensions started to climax during the era of the Civil Rights Movement, this discourse soon meet its challengers. In Montgomery, Alabama, arguably one of the most racist and defiant cities towards the movement of integration, people began to challenge the notion of racial segregation through a movement known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This movement, which lasted from December of 1955 to December of 1956, helped push the civil rights movement forward and challenge the …show more content…

By accepting arrest and remaining calm, poised, and humane, Parks, along with other heroic leaders of the movement, sets precedent for a major theme in the civil rights movement; non-violence. While non-violence was not always implicated throughout the Civil Rights Movement, it remains a powerful tactic which arguably helped the movement achieved the success it saw. Furthermore, her icon began to represent the plight of the black struggle in america, and her case went on to stage a precedent for the movement: that the black community would no longer tolerate the discrimination that it had endured for generations. Following the arrest of Rosa Parks, many organizations and people began to prepare for the bus boycott and other fights against segregation. One of these people was Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (Eyes on the Prize). While he is notable for his countless contributions and extensive leadership work during the Civil Rights Movement, his foundations at the Montgomery Bus Boycott remain prominent and influential. Specifically, the speech he delivered at the Holt Street Baptist Church on December 5, 1955 provides insight to his heroism and aids in uniting and driving the beginnings of the movement (Eyes on the Prize). In his speech, he calls for blacks to “work with grim and firm determination to gain justice on the buses” (Martin Luther King Jr.). He aims to establish the need for the

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