{"id":500,"date":"2017-11-06T18:22:08","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T18:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/?p=500"},"modified":"2017-12-13T21:28:45","modified_gmt":"2017-12-13T21:28:45","slug":"rosa-parks-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/rosa-parks-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Rosa Parks"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Meagan Perro <\/p>\n

Rosa Louise Lee Parks played a very important role in the fight against segregation. She was an African American woman born in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4th, 1913. She made her mark on the world on December 1st, 1955 when she decided to rebel. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. Everyone knows her by name as the woman who refused to to give up her seat, but that is really all most know. Rosa Parks contributed to the Civil Rights Movement in many ways and she had a huge impact on the world. She died on October 24th, 2005 and her life was honored greatly by multitudes of people. \u201cMany sought to commemorate her commitment to racial justice and pay tribute to her courage and public service\u201d (Theoharis, J). Although most know her as one of the United States\u2019s most significant hero, not many people honestly know everything she has done. <\/p>\n

Growing up, Rosa was extremely affected by the segregation and racism surrounding her. \u201cRosa later remembered lying in bed hearing the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist terrorist organization, riding by in the dark of night\u201d (\u201cParks, Rosa\u201d). Rosa\u2019s mother sent her to a private school where she learned the concept of self-worth. She then went on to study at Alabama State University. She did not graduate because she married Raymond Parks and moved to Montgomery, Alabama. They were civil rights activists together all of their adult lives. As one of the first women to join the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP<\/a>, she became the youth advisor and the secretary. She also volunteered with the Montgomery Voters League, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters<\/a>, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In mid 1955, Rosa also attended a workshop that taught her to organize and mobilize \u201cblack citizens to fight for workers’ rights in labor unions and racial equality, including school integration\u201d (\u201cParks, Rosa\u201d). <\/p>\n

Rosa had been fighting against segregation long before her well-known effort in not giving up her seat on that particular day. Previously, Rosa had refused to get off and use the back door of the bus to get to her seat and was thrown off. It can be argued that Rosa\u2019s refusal to stand and her arrest was not the most important thing she did in her fight against segregation. There are other people who were also arrested for the same action, including Claudette Colvin, a 15 year old girl who also refused to give up her seat. What can be considered more crucial is what happened after her arrest. E. D. Nixon, leader of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, spread the word of her arrest and by the next night there was fifty local black leaders gathered to fight segregation. This group formed the Montgomery Improvement Association. It was led by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks was the executive committee to the organization. The organization called for the famous bus boycott well known today. This bus boycott is what ended segregation on buses. Rosa fought her guilty conviction from her refusal to stand and won. Rosa continued to be active in the NAACP for the rest of her life. She also founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute of Self Development, which inspires African Americans towards education and a career. <\/p>\n

<\/a>

Rosa Parks receiving an award from Bill Clinton.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Works Cited<\/strong>
\n“Parks, Rosa.” Prejudice in the Modern World Reference Library, vol. 3: Biographies, UXL, 2007, pp. 167-174. World History in Context, libraries.state.ma.us\/login?gwurl=http:\/\/link.galegroup.com\/apps\/doc\/CX2831400063\/UHIC?u=mlin_c_worstate&xid=0fa4bc1b. Accessed 5 Nov. 2017.<\/p>\n

Theoharis, Jeanne. \u201cThe Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.\u201d The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks<\/em>, Beacon Press, 2015, p. viii.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Meagan Perro Rosa Louise Lee Parks played a very important role in the fight against segregation. She was an African American woman born in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4th, 1913. She made her mark on the world on December 1st, 1955 when she decided to rebel. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-blogposts","tag-fall17"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":501,"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions\/501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsu.tonahangen.com\/fysfifties\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}