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Rosa Parks Early Years Rosa Parks also known as the “Mother of Modern Civil Rights Movement” was born Rosa Louise McCauley to, James McCauley and Leona Edwards, on the 4th of February 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. She was small, even for a child, and she suffered poor health and had chronic tonsillitis. Her parents separated and she moved to Pine Level Just out side Montgomery. There she grew up on a farm with her younger brother Sylvester and her maternal grandparents. It is then she began her life long membership of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. At eleven she enrolled In an Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery, where she took academic and vocational courses. She then went on to laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes but had to drop out as she had to care for her ill grandmother and later her ill mother. Jim Craws law states that black and white people have to be segregated in virtually every aspect of life. Rosa noticed this first, because she lived in the south, that blacks had to walk to school, while whites could take the school bus, although this was different in the north. Even though the industrial school Rosa went to was founded and run by white northerners it was still burnt down by white arsonist. In 1932 Rosa married a black barber, Raymond Parks in her mothers house. He was a member of the “National Association For The Advancement Of Coloured People”(NAACP). Despite Jim Craws law that made it very hard for black people to get a chance to vote she succeeded on getting to vote on her third attempt.

Events Leading Up to Her stand Her first encounter on public transport was in 1943 she was heading home on a rainy day. She got on through the front door and was paying the bus driver, the bus driver made her hop of and go to the rear door and get on, but while she did this she dropped her purse and sat in a white people section seat. The bus driver was enraged and told her to get off, he barely gave her enough time to get off the bus before speeding of. Rosa had to walk 5 kilometres that day in the rain to get home. In 1944, an athletic star, Jackie Robinson, took a similar stand, refusing to move to the back of the bus, as the front was full of whites. He was acquitted before a court martial as of this. In Montgomery the first four rows of the bus’s seats were reserved for whites even thought the blacks are 75% of the people who were using the transport system. They were barely given enough room to sit at the back. Montgomery Bus Boycott Rosa got on a bus on the 1st of December 1955 as usual after work, she didn’t notice at first but it was James Blake driving, the same driver who had drove off and left her to walk 5 kilometres home. When she got on the bus there was plenty of space in the white section and the black section. She sat in the first row of black seats, second seat from the window, it was the first row off black seats behind the 10th row of whites. By the time they arrived at their first stop the white and black sections were full. There was two whites standing up. At this time the bus drivers had the powers to assign seats to black or whites but once in them they didn’t have to give up their seats. James Blake moved the black section back another row giving the whites now eleven rows of the bus. He told the blacks in these rows to give him the seats for the whites. Nobody moved at first when he said, "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats." But then he repeated himself saying, Let me have these seats.' The other three blacks in the row moved But Rosa stayed where she was. The bus driver warned her he was going to have to call the and have her arrested. She said, “You may do that”. She was arrested and while being taken away by the officer she asked, “why do you push us around” the officer’ reply was, “I don’t know, it’s the law I guess”. E.D. Nixon and Clifford Durr bailed her out that same evening. People think she didn’t give her seat because she was tired but she says she Was tired but not physically, but of giving in. Jo Ann Robinson of the Women’s Political Council (WPC) stayed up all night mimeographing 35,000 handbills announcing a bus boycott. The WPC was first to endorse it. It was also announced that the boycott was taking place at black churches and in a front-page article of the Montgomery Advertiser. People were asked to not use the bus the Monday 5th of December 1955. It said that” you can afford to stay out of school for one day. If you work take a cab or walk, but please children and grown-ups don’t ride the buses at all Monday. Please stay of the buses all Monday. The boycott took place some of the 40,000 commuters took black operated cabs charging 10 cents the same as the bus; some walked as much as 20 miles (30 kilometres). This went on for 382 days and affected the Bus Company badly financially. Until the law on segregation on the bus was lifted. Some segregationists retaliated by bombing Martin Luther JR’s home. E.D Nixons home was also attacked. However, the black community's bus boycott marked one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation. It sparked much other protest, and it catapulted King to the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. After her arrest Rosa lost her job at the department store and her husband quit because her boss forbade him to talk about the legal case or anything got to do with it. Later Years After her arrest she became an icon in the civil rights movement, but lost her job in the department store as a result of this. Her husband was driven to quit his job after his boss forbade him from talking about his wife or her legal case. Parks travelled and spoke extensively in. In 1957 they moved to Hampton Virginia mostly because they couldn’t find work but also because of disagreements with King and some of Montgomery’s other failing civil rights leaders. Later that year Sylvester Parks urged them to moved to Detroit. Parks worked as a seamstress until 1965 when African-American U.S Representative John Conyers hired her as a secretary and receptionist for his congressional office in Detroit. She held this position until she retired in 1988. Rosa Parks and Elaine Eason Steele co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for self Development in February1987, in honour of Rosa's husband, who died from cancer in1977. The institute runs the "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours, which introduce young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country. On August 30th, 1994, Joseph Skipper, an African-American drug addict, attacked 81-year-old Parks in her home. The incident sparked outrage throughout America. After his arrest, Skipper said that he had not known he was in Parks' home but recognised her after entering. Skipper asked, "Hey, aren't you Rosa Parks?" to which she replied, "Yes." She handed him $3 when he demanded money, and another $50 to him when he demanded more. Before fleeing, Skipper hit Parks in the face. Skipper was arrested and charged with various breaking and entering offences. Rosa received awards from President Bill Clinton, Martin Luther King JR. and many other different awards Rosa Parks died of dementia at the age of ninety-two on the 24 of October 2005. An estimate of 50,000 people viewed her casket. In the evening the casket was transported to Washington Dc, and taken, aboard a bus similar to the one in which she made her protest, to lie in honour in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda (making her the first woman and second African American ever to receive this honour).

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