What is the significance of rosa parks and the civil rights movement

Due to the size and scope of, and loyalty to, boycott participation, the effort continued for several months. The city of Montgomery had become a victorious eyesore, with dozens of public buses sitting idle, ultimately severely crippling finances for its transit company.

With the boycott's progress, however, came strong resistance. Some segregationists retaliated with violence. Black churches were burned, and both King and E. Nixon's homes were destroyed by bombings. Still, further attempts were made to end the boycott. The insurance was canceled for the city taxi system that was used by African Americans.

Black citizens were arrested for violating an antiquated law prohibiting boycotts. In response to the ensuing events, members of the African American community took legal action. Armed with the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which stated that separate but equal policies had no place in public education, a Black legal team took the issue of segregation on public transit systems to the U.

Parks' attorney, Fred Gray, filed the suit. In June , the district court declared racial segregation laws also known as "Jim Crow laws" unconstitutional. The city of Montgomery appealed the court's decision shortly thereafter, but on November 13, , the U. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling, declaring segregation on public transport to be unconstitutional.

With the transit company and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift its enforcement of segregation on public buses, and the boycott officially ended on December 20, The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African American community, made the Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.

Although she had become a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement , Parks suffered hardship in the months following her arrest in Montgomery and the subsequent boycott. She lost her department store job and her husband was fired after his boss forbade him to talk about his wife or their legal case. Unable to find work, they eventually left Montgomery and moved to Detroit, Michigan along with Parks' mother. There, Parks made a new life for herself, working as a secretary and receptionist in U.

Representative John Conyer's congressional office. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The organization runs "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours, introducing young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country.

In , she published Quiet Strength , which includes her memoirs and focuses on the role that religious faith played throughout her life. The song featured the chorus:. That very bus, painstakingly restored , is now parked inside Henry Ford Museum, and open to everyone.

See the overhead light shining down on the green-cushioned seat in the middle? Settle yourself here, just as Rosa Parks did. We know from many accounts that Rosa Parks recognized the bus driver—he had humiliated her and other black riders over the years. She also knew that this man, who threatened to have her arrested, carried a pistol in his holster. She was aware of recent racial atrocities, including the mistreatment of another black woman, Claudette Colvin, for not giving up her seat, and the death earlier that summer of year-old Emmett Till from a lynching.

As one of her biographers, Douglas Brinkley , observed, Rosa Parks in that moment felt fearless, bold, and serene. Three other black riders sat in the same row, one next to Rosa Parks, the other two across the aisle. When the bus driver again demanded that all four passengers give up their seats, the three other riders reluctantly got up. All the black riders were now at the back, all the whites at the front.

Rosa Parks sat between them, a brave solitary figure marking the painful boundary between races. I could be manhandled or beaten. I could be arrested. I did not think about that at all.

In fact if I had let myself think too deeply about what might happen to me, I might have gotten off the bus. What arose in Parks on that fateful evening was her belief in what Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Favoring whites and repressing blacks became an institutionalized form of inequality. And, by , with the Plessy v. Ferguson case, the U. Supreme Court ruled that states had the legal power to require segregation between blacks and whites. Before the Civil Rights Act, African Americans faced persistent racial discrimination when traveling. It could be difficult to find restaurants, hotels, or other amenities.

This edition listed travel information that would keep the traveler "from running into difficulties [and] embarrassments," and would "make his trips more enjoyable. Victor H. Green and Company. United States. Hotels Public accomodations. Travel in the segregated South was particularly humiliating for African Americans, beginning with railroads back in the 19th century, where blacks of all economic classes were generally relegated to the most uncomfortable cars just behind the locomotive—and also, should a collision or boiler explosion occur, the most dangerous.

With the arrival of affordable automobiles, it seemed southern blacks might escape the indignities of long-distance rail travel.

As a result, black motorists often resorted to stashing buckets or portable toilets in their trunks. They also brought food along with them, since many diners and restaurants turned away black customers. The laws on city transit systems separating blacks and whites were equally humiliating—and often arbitrary.

By , every southern state had outlawed blacks from sitting next to whites on trolleys and streetcars, while it was left to the whims of individual conductors whether black passengers were ordered to move from this or that seat. By the s, black passengers were enduring the same unjust treatment by city bus drivers. Bus drivers could demand more seats for whites at any time and in any number. And drivers often forced black riders, once they had paid their fare, to get off the bus and re-enter through the back door—sometimes driving away without them, as had happened to Rosa Parks.

As stories of abusive drivers and humiliating incidents continued to spread, anger in the black community grew. However, most of the time, the indignities went unchallenged. Rosa Parks' awareness of social injustice started at an early age.

Growing up in Alabama, where she was born in , she hated the disrespectful way that whites often treated black people. Her grandfather, a former slave, instilled a sense of pride and independence in her. Parks became an instant icon, but her resistance was a natural extension of a lifelong commitment to activism. Over the years, she had repeatedly disobeyed bus segregation regulations.

Once, she even had been put off a bus for her defiance. Nixon was there when Parks was released on bail later that evening. Nixon had hoped for years to find a courageous Black person of unquestioned honesty and integrity to become the plaintiff in a case that might become the test of the validity of segregation laws. By midnight, 35, flyers were being mimeographed to be sent home with Black schoolchildren, informing their parents of the planned boycott.

Meanwhile, Black participation in the boycott was much larger than even optimists in the community had anticipated. Nixon and some ministers decided to take advantage of the momentum, forming the Montgomery Improvement Association MIA to manage the boycott, and they elected Reverend Dr. As appeals and related lawsuits wended their way through the courts, all the way up to the U. Her husband, brother and mother all died of cancer between and But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Parks was not the first African American woman to be arrested for refusing to yield her seat on a Montgomery bus. Nine months before Parks was jailed, year-old Claudette Colvin was the first Montgomery bus passenger to be arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a Twelve years later, on December 1, , on her way home from a long day of work as a department store Revered as a civil rights icon, Rosa Parks is best known for sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott, but her activism in the Black community predates that day.

When Rosa Parks refused to give her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man in , she was put in handcuffs and arrested.