Rosa Parks Role in the African Americans Civil Rights Movement - Essay Example

Rosa Parks Rosa Parks was born as Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Rosa and her parent moved to Pine Level Alabama when Rosa was at the age 2 years where they now lived with the parent’s of Rosa’s mother. In a family where the mother was a teacher, it is only natural that the McCauley family greatly valued education. At the age of 11 years, Rosa moved to Alabama where she was able to attend high school. The high school was essentially a laboratory school located at the Alabama State Teacher’s college and was meant for the education of Negroes. At the age of 16, Rosa was forced to leave high school so as to help in attending to her dying mother and her soon to be chronically ill mother. In 1932, She married Raymond Parks at the age of 19 years. Raymond, a barber was 10 years her senior as well as a long time member of the NAACP civil movement. Raymond supported Rosa and encouraged her to get her high-school diploma which she eventually did in the following year (History 2014). Raymond and Rosa Parks became very well respected members of the moderately large African-American community in Montgomery. Although Raymond had previously discouraged Rosa from joining the local NAACP chapter, Rosa eventually joined the chapter in 1943 and became its secretary within a short time. Her work at the NAACP required that she works very closely with the chapter President Edgar D. Nixon (History 2014). Most historians agree that the modern civil rights movement in the United States started on December 1, 1955. On this day, after a long day at work, the 42-Rosa Parks who worked as a seamstress boarded the Montgomery City bus to go home from work. Parks sat down near the middle of the bus which was just behind the 10 bus seats that were normally reserved for whites. The bus was soon full and pull-off. At one point along the route, a white man boarded the already full bus and following the standard segregation practice of the day, the bus driver stopped the bus and asked all of the four black that were occupying the row immediately behind the 10 seats reserved for whites, to stand up and give up the seats they were occupying so as to afford the white man the opportunity of occupying one of these seats. While the three other African-Americans occupying these seats obeyed this directive, Mrs. Parks, who was by then an especially active member of the NAACP, quietly refused to stand and give up her seat stating that she was tired. This non pre-meditated and spontaneous action on her part caused her to promptly be arrested and convicted for the violation of the Jim Crow segregation laws. Upon her arrest, although Mrs. Parks used her one phone call to contact her husband and inform him of exactly what had happened, word of her arrest was soon to spread quickly and NAACP and other civil rights leaders such as E.D. Nixon were present when Parks was eventually released on bail later on in the evening. Nixon had for years been hoping to find a courageous black person of unquestionable integrity and honesty who would willingly become the plaintiff in a case that would severely test the general validity of segregation laws; while visiting the Parks home, Nixon convinced both Mrs. Parks and her husband that Mrs. Parks was this long awaited plaintiff. During this meeting it was also proposed that all the blacks across Montgomery would actively boycott using the buses on December 5 which was the day that Parks was to go on trial. By midnight on the same day, an approximated over 35,000 fliers were being mimeographed so as to be sent to all the homes that had black school children informing the parents of these children of the planned boycott. On December 5, Mrs. Parks was duly found to be guilty of the willful violation of segregation laws. Mrs. Parks was given a suspended sentence in addition to her being fined $10 together with an additional $4 as court costs. In giving her eye witness account Rebecca Carr who was one of Parks’s close friends points out that black participation in the boycott had considerably grown to be even much larger than had been expected and taking advantage of this momentum Nixon and a number of ministers formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) (Houck and Dixon p. 81-82). The association then elected young Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who at the time happened to be just 26 years old as its president. By appealing her conviction Mrs. Parks is seen to have formally challenged the overall legality of the segregation laws. Segregation laws in Montgomery were particularly harsh and bus drivers were routinely given a great amount of latitude in making decision as to where persons of different races could sit on their buses. These extremely harsh segregation laws also provided bus drivers with the authority to carry guns so as to better enforce their edicts. When Mrs. Parks appealed her conviction, the local civil rights activists initiated a total boycott of Montgomery’s bus system and this boycott was to eventually spread across the Southern United States as African Americans in different cities engaged in the boycott (Houck and Dickson 2009). The boycott that had inadvertently been started by Mrs. Parks not only posed a significant threat to white rule and white supremacy, it also caused the Montgomery bus system to incurs considerable economic losses as African Americans accounted for about 75 percent of the total bus riders in Montgomery. As appeals and other related lawsuits gradually wended their way through the country’s various law courts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the boycott which was by then fiercely being advocated for by Dr. King engendered some violence and a lot of anger among Montgomery’s white population. This violence by the whites saw both the homes of Dr. King and Nixon get bombed. The increased violence did not deter these dedicated leaders or the boycotters but instead, had the effect of causing the drama that was being enacted in Montgomery to continue gaining attention from international and national press. Eventually, on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court came to a decision and ruled that bus segregation was fundamentally unconstitutional and the long standing bus boycott eventually ended on December 20, which was a day after the arrival in Montgomery of the Court’s written order. This boycott had managed to last for 381 days. It was not accidental that the civil rights movement challenging the segregation laws in the United States started on a bus. While it was often quite easy for the Jim Crow customs and laws to easily separate races in nearly all the different aspects of life, it was however quite difficult for these segregation laws to achieve the same measure of success in transportation. It was virtually impossible for most of the country’s train and bus companies to be able to afford allocating separate cars for the races a factor that in turn forced the blacks and whites to occupy the very same space. As such, transportation was widely regarded as being a very volatile race relations area across the south. Buses were considered to be potent lightning rods for civil rights activists across Southern United States and it only needed for one brave person such as Rosa Parks to walk up and have the necessary courage strike the lightning that would result in a revolution. After the boycott, Rosa Parks began facing continued threats and harassment as a result of which she eventually moved to Detroit together with both her mother and her husband. In Detroit, Parks became one of the administrative aide’s in Congressman John Conyers Jr’s Detroit office. Parks activism saw her co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in 1987which still continues to serve Detroit’s youth (Cornwell 2012). After her retirement, Mrs. Parks continued playing a very active role in the civil rights movement as she travelled widely so as to lend her support to various civil rights causes and events across the country. Parks was eventually awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999 which is the highest civilian honor that the United States bestows. She was 92 years when she died on October 24, 2005, Rosa Parks became the very first woman in the United States’ history to ever lie in state at the United States Capitol (History 2014). Conclusion In his analysis of Rosa Park, Cornwell (2012) points out that Rosa Parks’ role in the African American’s civil rights movement and freedom from segregation can never be over emphasized. Her refusal to give up her seat to a white person led to the peaceful boycott that soon spread across most of the Southern United States, as African-Americans boycotted the use of the extremely segregation practiced in bus transport systems in what was to herald the birth of modern civil rights movement in America. The boycott and subsequent court actions eventually forced the city of Montgomery to eventually relent and lift the laws it had enacted that required segregation on public buses. The court victory she won against this segregation encourages other civil rights advocates such as Dr. King to continuously challenge the validity of the Jim Crow laws across America. Her activism saw Rosa Park receive numerous accolades including the NAACP’s Highest Award as well as a Congressional Gold Medal. Works Cited Cornwell Rupert. Rosa Parks. 2012. Web, April 2012. Available at History. ROSA PARKS. Web, April 2013. Available at Houck, Davis and Dixon. Women and the civil rights movement, 1954-1965. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. Print. Read More