Striving For Equality By Ida B. Wells, Rosa Parks, Recy Taylor, And Kimberlee Crenshaw

“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.” This was said by Rosa Parks. She was an enormous inspiration to the African American Race. She was one among many who lived in a rough time for African Americans. She lived in a time when equality wasn’t really equal. When African Americans were scared/ weren’t allowed to state their opinions on different matters. However, Rosa Parks was an individual who stood up for herself. Rosa Parks helped the Civil Rights Movement and African Americans gain equality mainly through her courage and refusal to move.

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 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

On December 1, 1955 a black seamstress, after a long and exhausting day at work, got onto a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama and sat in the back where the blacks were portioned off. A few stops following, a flock of white people boarded. They seized all the remaining seats in the front, except for one white man who was forced to stand as the seats were filled up. The bus driver ordered the four black people in the rear end of the bus to give up their seats to the white man.Three of the four stood up hesitantly. Rosa Parks, the work-weary black seamstress did not. She was arrested later that evening. She was angry at the hate and disrespect towards blacks and minorities. She had enough of the way the world has treated them and she knew that

In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, which ultimately became the cause of her arrest that same year. At the time, only white individuals could have the seats towards the front of the bus because many public means were segregated. This lead to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was a civil rights protest against racial segregation on public transportation in Montgomery, Alabama. As stated by Clayborne Carson, the director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project and Professor of History at Stanford University, “the Montgomery bus boycott should be understood as the outgrowth of a long history of activism by people from different educational backgrounds and economic classes” (Carson 13). The Montgomery Bus Boycott was one of the key examples of protests that led to a series of change in the nation afterward regarding the rights of African American citizens.

In school, we have grown up learning that Rosa Parks was a sweet old lady who firmly stood (or in her case, sat) for what she believed in, but we don’t learn about her story before her bus riding days. In the book, At the End of the Dark Street, the author, Danielle L. McGuire, shows how Parks played a major role in the civil rights movement. She single handedly started the bus boycotts in 1955, which would eventually lead to a desegregated transit system.

This interview reviews Rosa Park’s early life and what led up to and followed her boycott on the Montgomery bus. This interview also discusses Rosa Parks’s views on racial inequality and advice she gives to aspiring youth. This source is useful for understanding what ideas and people led to Rosa Parks’s actions as she refused to give up her seat on that bus. This interview is a primary source that is reliable.

Every American child learns about Rosa Parks in school and how she stood up for her rights by refusing to get out of her bus seat for a white person. What most Americans do not know is that it was Claudette Colvin who was the first person to be arrested for challenging Montgomery’s bus segregation laws. There were a number of women who refused to give up their seats on the same bus system, but most women were quietly fined and never heard from again. Colvin and Parks changed things in Alabama. After Colvin was arrested, Colvin and Parks met at a NAACP youth meeting.

Who would have ever thought African-American women refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man would change history? “Her act of resistance that day unleashed a movement that helped to end legal segregation in the U.S., and cemented her as the “mother of the Civil Rights Movement” (Tarlo). This was not the first time that Rosa Parks was standing up for equality for all people. Rosa and her husband were active members of the Montgomery, Alabama’s local chapter of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1943. They worked with the NAACP for many years trying to improve the lives of African Americans in the segregated South. “I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP,” Mrs. Parks recalled, “but we did not get the publicity. There were cases of flogging, peonage, murder, and rape. We didn’t seem to have too many successes. It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be, and to let it be known that we did not wish to continue being second-class citizens” (Rosa Parks

This topic is very important because Rosa Parks, an african american woman, wouldn’t give up her seat for a white man on a bus. She refused and was taken to jail. She was arrested on December 1, 1955. She was in court for 381 day. Martin Luther King Jr. organized the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, which began a chain reaction of similar boycotts throughout the South. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his have

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks made history in her hometown of Montgomery, Alabama (Baggett, 2016). Alabama, amongst many other southern states, enforced segregation in public places. Rosa Parks boarded a bus after a long day of work at the local department store and paid the white bus driver her regular fare. The bus was full, as it normally was at this time of day, and Rosa took her seat at the front of the black section of the bus (Sanders, 2006, p. 3). Black passengers were advised to yield to white passengers if the front half of the white section was full. The bus driver began to drive and eventually made another stop at the next station. White passengers began to board the bus and took all the remaining white seats at the front of the bus; however, there was one man left standing. The bus driver asked Rosa and the other passengers beside her to vacate

Rosa Louis McCauley Parks is an African-American Civil Rights activist whom the United States Congress call “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement”. Her bold titles match her bold actions, as on December 1st, she disobeyed her bus driver upon giving up her seat to a white passenger and was soon arrested. As the White American’s privileges over ride the African American’s rights, rules are also made to maintain that statues quo. The front of a bus and it’s seats, are for the white passengers while the back of the bus is for the African Americans. The centre is allocated for African Americans as well, however there is an imaginary ‘colour line’ which will move further and further back to fit the white passengers who would get on the bus. It is also the bus drivers job to announce when an African American passenger had to move to allow a white passenger to sit down, to add, a white passenger and an African American are not allowed to sit with one another as the African American would be forced to move to allow the white passenger to claim the seat.

“Doesn’t think any segregation law angered black people in Montgomery more than bus segregation,” ( Parks Rosa 108). “For half of my life there were laws and customs in the South that kept African Americans segregated from caucasians and allowed white people to treat black people without any respect,” ( Parks Rosa 2). “She ignored what the white bus driver said to her,” ( Parks Rosa 1). Even though she refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery bus, she was arrested by two policemen for disobeying the laws of

Black Feminism argues that sexism, class oppression and racism are linked together. Mainstream feminism that more than often benefits white women, strives to overcome class and gender oppression, however they do not recognise that race can discriminate against women also. Activist, Alice Walker states that black women experience a different kind of oppression when compared to their white counterparts. Professor of Sociology and social activist, Patricia Hill Collins summarises that Black feminism is ‘a process of self-conscious struggle that empowers women and men to actualise a humanist vision of community.’ Her quote welcomes individuals of any gender, whom understands black women’s struggle to fight with them. [Collins, 1991:39]