Less than 75 years ago, many places in our country still had laws that were deeply unfair to Black people. Segregation laws kept Black people and White people separate. One of these laws required Black people to ride in the back of a bus. If a White person needed a seat, a Black person had to give up theirs. On December 1, 1955, a Black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a White passenger. The driver called the police and Parks was arrested.
Black people in Montgomery were tired of being treated unfairly. When they heard what happened to Rosa Parks, they started a boycott. They stopped riding the bus to work and to school. The bus companies lost a lot of money, and people across the country heard about the nonviolent protest in Montgomery. Finally, 13 months after the boycott began, the US Supreme Court said that bus segregation was unconstitutional. The unfair law was changed.
Rosa Parks is known as a hero because of her brave act of resistance in December of 1955. But her work for justice went far beyond the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Rosa was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. She was frustrated by the unfair treatment of Black people at an early age, and she was determined to fight for change. She married Raymond Parks when she was 19 years old. Both Rosa Parks and her husband cared passionately about racial justice. They worked together with groups like the National Association for Colored People (NAACP). By the day in December 1955 when Parks sat down on the bus, she was a respected civil rights leader in Montgomery.
Parks was 42 at the time of the boycott. Both she and her husband lost their jobs because of their role in the protest. After the boycott ended, they had to leave Alabama to find work. They moved to Detroit, Michigan. Poor health and money troubles made life hard. Still, Parks continued to work for justice. She protested housing segregation. She participated in freedom marches. She worked to improve the lives of prisoners. In 1987, she started the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. This organization educates young people about the struggle for civil rights.
Rosa Parks died at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005, after a lifetime of fighting for racial justice and human rights.
What Do You Think? What about Rosa Parks’ story inspires you?
Photo Credit: World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo
