Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Rosa Parks, one of America's greatest women, titled the "mother of the civil rights movement" died on Monday, 10.24.05 of natural causes. She was 92.



To teach students her place in history, try these themed lesson plans from Education World.com. The plans are geared to grades 3-5, 6-8 and 9 - 12.

Parks challenged the nation's concious simply by saying no. The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress, an active member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat. Parks said "no" and was subsequently arrested for violating a law forbidding blacks to sit on a bus if a white wanted the seat.

Her arrest sparked an organized response from blacks and whites alike as very quickly some fifty leaders of the black community (among them was the young minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) met to discuss the issue. The leaders organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott that would continue until the bus segregation laws were changed. The citywide boycott of the bus system by blacks, in which they refused to use the bus for transportation, lasted for 382 days. It caused the bus company to lose a huge amount of money -- and changed America forever.

In December of 1956, the Supreme Court decided that bus segregation violated the constitution. The Civil Rights Movement was put into motion, which led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Today all Americans, whatever their race, nationality, or religion, must be given equal treatment under the law.

Parks actions happened when she was 42 years old and she remained committed to community and civil rights causes for years after, retiring at age 75.

In 1987, she cofounded a mentoring organization for teenagers, the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in Detroit, where she still lives. Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, sums up her act of defiance this way: "When the history of the civil rights movement is written 100 years from now, there are only going to be two significant names–Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks...."