Rosa+Parks

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 * [[image:rosa_parks-1.jpg width="181" height="267" align="left"]] [[image:rosa-parks-dickson1dec05.jpg width="198" height="269" align="left"]] Rosa Parks- **======

** Born February 4 1913, Died October 24 2005 **

//Social reformer - sparked and initiated a civil rights boycott

​// Rosa Parks like many Black people was nurtured in the matrix of white supremacy mythology, and yet aware of its false promises and waiting for the right time to boldly challenge racism before the eyes of the world (IMDiversity, 2010).

Rosa Parks was taking a bus home after work on December 1, 1955. She occupied the only vacant seat at the back of the bus where it was considered the white section. When a white man got on the bus, there were no seats, so he stood. The bus driver noticed, got up and told Rosa, along with the others in the same row to move to the back of the bus where it was considered the black section. She refused, not because she was tired physically, but she was tired of being pushed around by the white community. Rosa Parks in her autobiography states, "I knew someone had to take the first step and I made up my mind not to move. Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it." As a result, she was arrested for violating Alabama's segregation laws (Lewis, J 2010). Under these segregation laws, the front seats of buses were reserved for white people. Africian Americans could sit in the "back of the bus on in the middle if whites did not require these seats" (Retrospective, 2008 pg 131).

Rosa Parks was very influential in the Civil Rights Movement, namely in the Montgomery Bus Movement. Rosa Park's actions sparked a boycott by the African American community which lasted 381 days. The boycott brought national attention to not only what Rosa Parks did, but also to the plight of black people in the South and resulted in the ending of segregation on Montgomery's buses.

"Her quiet courageous act changed America, its view of black people and redirected the course of history" (Rosa & Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, 2008) In refusing to give up her seat, she initiated a 10 year national struggle for black rights and a key influential figures to persons like Martin Luther King Jr.

Rosa Parks received many honors ranging from the 1979 Springarn Medal to the Congressional Gold Medal, a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Sanctuary Hall. She was also inducted into the Michigan Womens Hall of Fame in 1983 for her achievements in Civil Rights. In 1990, she was called at the last moment to be part of the group welcoming Nelson Mandela who had just been released from his imprisonment in South Africa. Nelson Mandela also said to her when greeting her "You sustained me while I was in prison all those years." Her death in 2005 was a major story in the United States' leading newspapers. Dying from natural causes at age 92 on October the 24th, the city officials in Detroit and Montgomery reserved the front seats of their city buses with black ribbons in memory of Rosa parks until her funeral

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Bibliography__ IMDiveristy, (2010) [] Rosa & Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, (2008) [] Lewis, J (2010) [] PIC 1: [] PIC 2: [] Other Useful Resources: []