Rosa Parks: One Woman

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama NAACP secretary Rosa Parks refused give a white man her seat on a segregated bus. In response to the bus driver telling her to move, she said, “it was time for someone to stand up, or in my case, sit down. I refused to move.”

After it became clear that she wasn’t going to move for the white man, Parks was arrested. Her case went to the federal court where it was overturned due to the fact that the form of segregation used on the Montgomery buses was unconstitutional. When her case went to the Supreme Court they agreed with the previous court’s decision and claimed the “separate but equal” no longer applied.

Meanwhile, Martin Luther King Jr. led the boycott of the Montgomery buses. A system of carpools was used to ferry around African Americans when needed. This proved that African-Americans could unite to peacefully protest unfair actions.

Parks, once just a seamstress with an interest in boycott segregation, did a lot of things in her everyday life to combat the unfairness. She wouldn’t use colored elevators and instead used the stairs. Similarly, she refused to use segregated water fountains. In the summer of 1955 she attended a workshop promoting inter-racial living for students. Her actions prove that one person can make a world of difference.

-By Becky and Liane