Rosa Parks: Biography Of This Civil Rights Activist In The US
Rarely has such a trivial act become a genuine act of protest against injustice, in this case against racial segregation. Rosa Parks, a humble black dressmaker, became a symbol of civil rights when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, defying an unjust norm.
This led to her being arrested and tried and, what could have been just another injustice of the many that blacks had to suffer in the 1950s, became a demonstration that demonstrated how African Americans can destabilize and overthrow a racist system. .
Below we will learn about the life history of this reference in the anti-racist struggle, what she did and how she has been widely remembered and decorated since her incident with the bus seat, through a biography of Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States. Her parents were James, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a teacher who would dedicate herself to teaching little Rosa to read at an early age. When Rosa was only two years old, her parents separated from her, and she and her mother moved to the home of her maternal grandparents Rose and Sylvester Edwards in Pine Level.
Her grandparents would be very important for Rosa in her fight against racial inequalities since they were former slaves and strong defenders of equality. Furthermore, Rosa Parks would be marked since her childhood when she witnessed how one day her grandfather had to stand in front of her house with a shotgun while members of the Ku Klux Klan marched down the street.
While at Pine Level and thanks to the fact that her mother had taught her to read, Rosa Parks was able to attend the local school which, like most schools in the country, was segregated. The treatment between white and black students was evident. While the whites had a bus provided by the municipality and could teach classes in a new building, the blacks had to walk to class and barely had the equipment to give quality classes.
Pink He had to leave his studies at the age of 16 because his mother and grandmother fell ill and he had to take care of them Although she was not able to resume them, she did manage to get a job as a seamstress in a shirt factory in the city of Montgomery, which helped her survive. In 1932, at just 19 years old, she married Raymond Parks, a barber by profession and an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It was thanks to Raymond’s help that Rosa could obtain her high school degree a year later.
After graduating Rosa Parks became actively involved in the fight for civil rights, joining the NAACP in 1943 and serving as youth leader and secretary to association president Edgar Daniel Nixon a position he held until 1957. The Parks couple never had children, but what they did have was a very vindictive life together that gave them extensive fame in the fight for the rights of African Americans.
On December 1, 1955, the event occurred that would change the life of Rosa Parks and that of thousands of African Americans. That day Rosa Parks would end up arrested for a very simple and trivial act: not giving up her seat. She didn’t give in not because she was tired, but because she was exhausted of white people being treated with privileges to the detriment of black people. Her legal obligation, although unfair, was to have to give up her seat to that white citizen who so desired.
The Montgomery City Code at the time was clearly racist It required that all public transportation be segregated and that vehicle drivers have the same powers as a police officer while in charge of the bus, and must enforce racial norms. Drivers had to assign separate seats to white and black passengers, marking a line in the middle of the bus: whites were in front, African-Americans in back.
However, this division could be changed depending on how many whites were on the bus. If the bus was filled with white people, the colored people were forced to give up their seats and go further back or stand, which happened on December 1, 1955. The vehicle in which Rosa Parks was traveling was filled with whites and the driver told her and three other black passengers to give up their seats. The regulations allowed the driver to call the police in case of refusal.
The other three passengers got up and obeyed the driver, but Parks refused , even knowing what it implied. She was going to remain seated, she was not going to give up her seat because she was black. This brave act would go down in history as one of the most important protests of the 20th century, with a lot of social and political repercussions. With her gesture, Rosa Parks was arrested and charged with violating Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code. She was taken to police headquarters and that same night she was released on bail.
Bus boycott
A few days later, on December 5, the trial against Rosa Parks took place. The event spread like wildfire and at the entrance to the court a bustling crowd of 500 people was waiting to support her. On the morning of that day a group of African American leaders met at Mount Zion Church in Montgomery to discuss strategies and decided to promote a bus boycott. This is how the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) emerged, which considered that Rosa Parks’ case provided the perfect opportunity to initiate real change.
After a 30-minute hearing, Rosa Parks was found guilty of violating local ordinance and sentenced to pay a $10 fine along with $4 in court fees. The MIA asked African Americans in Montgomery, as an act of protest, not to use city buses. Since the majority of blacks did not usually use the bus, the organizers of the protest considered that their strong point should be time The longer the boycott lasted, the more pressure would be achieved.
This $14 fine, which may seem small to us, was enormously unfair and large both for the reason it was imposed and for the pocketbook of an African-American woman in the 1950s. For this reason, the boycott call had a lot of follow-up, causing the city buses to remain empty. The 40,000 black travelers who used to use them decided that, from that moment on, they would go to work on foot, some even having to walk 30 kilometers.
Black people, so long despised and rejected their rights, discovered how with their actions they could destabilize a racist white society. By stopping using public buses, many of them were stopped, severely damaging the finances of the transportation company. No matter how second-class citizens the blacks were, the fact that they boycotted the use of transportation meant serious losses for transportation and the city of Montgomery.
Naturally many segregationists orchestrated violent reprisals against the black population African American churches were burned and the homes of Martin Luther King and ED Nixon were razed. There were also African Americans who tried to end the boycott, since many of them were already tired of traveling long distances on foot to get to their jobs. Injustices continued to occur, with many blacks arrested with the excuse that a very outdated law was being applied that prohibited boycotts.
Legal victory
In response to these harsh reprisals, members of the African American community took legal action, taking the case of segregation in public transportation systems to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama The person who filed the lawsuit was Rosa Parks’ lawyer, Fred Gray.
In June 1956 the well-known segregationist “Jim Crow laws” were declared unconstitutional by the District Court. Still, the city of Montgomery appealed the ruling on November 13, 1956, in a clear attempt to continue its racist system and repress blacks. Likewise, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Rosa Parks’ case, declaring that transportation segregation was unconstitutional.
The legal ruling along with the financial losses associated with the boycott caused the city of Montgomery to reluctantly lift segregation on public buses in December 1956. Thanks to the combination of legal action and community determination African American by maintaining their boycott, which lasted 381 days, they managed to get closer to racial equality. By not giving up her seat Rosa Parks gave rise to one of the largest and most successful mass movements in North American racial history
After becoming a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, in addition to achieving widespread fame, Parks could not escape being a victim of retaliation. Both she and her husband were fired from their respective jobs and could not find a new one in Montgomery, so they had to leave the city and settle in Detroit with Rosa’s mother.
In her new city Rosa Parks would work as a secretary and receptionist in the congressional office of United States Representative John Conyer He also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In 1987 she along with her friend Elaine Eason Steele founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development.
Death
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks died on October 24, 2005 in her apartment in Detroit, Michigan, at the age of 92 due to a myocardial infarction. The previous year he had been diagnosed with progressive dementia that, surely, had been manifesting since 2002. His death, like his iconic seat incident, did not go unnoticed, receiving the attention of all the media and having a resounding funeral. .
It was held at the Capitol in Washington, where nearly 50,000 people gathered. She became the first woman and the second black person to receive a state burial of such caliber, granted to only 28 people in United States history. She was later buried next to her husband and her mother in Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery. Shortly after, this would become a chapel to be named Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel.
Recognitions
Rosa Parks received many recognitions for her bravery and advocacy in favor of equality and the rights of African Americans. Among her awards we find the Spingarn Medal, which is the highest award of the NAACP, in addition to the prestigious Martin Luther King Jr. Award. On September 15, 1996 President Bill Clinton awarded Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom , the highest honor award that the American executive branch can conceive. The following year she would win the Congressional Gold Medal, offered by the United States legislative branch.
In 1999, TIME magazine named Parks one of the 20 most influential people of the 20th century. In 2000, Troy University opened the Rosa Parks Museum located in the same place where she was arrested in 1955. On February 4, 2013, the day Rosa Parks would have turned 100, The date was marked by releasing a commemorative stamp from the United States Postal Service called the “Rosa Parks Forever” stamp In February of that same year, President Barack Obama unveiled a statue in his honor at the Capitol.
