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The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement - Rosa Parks

© Katie Anne Gustafsson

Many people complain about how unfair life is, or how bad conditions are, but few of them have the courage to make a stand for what they believe in, regardless of what the consequences might be. On 1st December 1955, Rosa Parks felt her tolerance of the racial segregation situation had reached its peak and so she took a stand that was to ultimately change the way of life for many African Americans both in her community, and around the USA: Her action? She simply refused to give up her seat on the bus!

Born 4th February 1913 in Tuskegee Alabama, Rosa was educated at what is now the Alabama State University. She was active in the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People - known more generally as NAACP - where she acted as Secretary for many years. After leaving University, she and her husband settled in Montgomery Alabama where they continued their work for NAACP, trying to improve the lives of the African Americans around them. At the time of her arrest, Rosa was working as a seamstress.

On the day in question, Rosa was sitting in a row of seats at the back of the area designated for white people. There were four African Americans in that row, including herself. A white man boarded the bus and found that he had to stand. White people were not to share seat rows with African Americans and so he told the four people in Rosa's row to move. Three of them did, but she didn't. She decided she was tired of all the racial injustice that she saw around her and she refused to vacate her seat. Her subsequent arrest for this act of defiance was the start of what became known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Four days after her arrest, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was created. This was led by a man who would later become synonymous with the Civil Rights Movement - although he was unknown at the time - Martin Luther King Jr. As a direct result of Rosa's courage to make a stand, the MIA encouraged all the African Americans in Montgomery to boycott the use of the public buss. As time progressed and the boycott continued, the African Americans were persecuted and harassed - even to the point of some of them having their homes bombed, but their perseverance paid off when on 20th December 1956 the US Supreme Court found that the policy of segregated seating in Montgomery was unconstitutional. A small non-violent act by a tired woman had resulted in one of the major victories in African American history.

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