?Who is Rosa Parks, who ignited the first widespread protest against apartheid in America
When talking about the symbols of the civil freedom and anti-racism movement in the United States, perhaps the most prominent figure that comes to mind is Reverend Martin Luther King - who among us has not seen or read the text of his famous speech that he delivered during the march that took place in Washington in 1963 to protest racial discrimination against... African American, which included the iconic "I Have a Dream" line.
But of course there were many other influential figures in the history of that movement. Among these figures is a woman named Rosa Parks, whose “simple act” one day on a bus in Alabama sparked resistance to racial segregation laws in the United States and hastened their abolition.
?Who is Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her father was a skilled builder and carpenter named James McCauley, and her mother was a teacher named Leona Edwards McCauley. Her parents divorced when she was two years old, and she moved with her mother and younger brother to live on her maternal grandparents' farm near Montgomery.
During her childhood, Parks received much of her education at home from her mother, who worked as a teacher at a local African-American school, and Rosa also taught for some time at the same school.
Her life on the farm was not ideal at all. The Ku Klux Klan, a racist extremist group, posed a constant threat to black people. She later spoke of the group “burning black churches and schools, flogging and killing black people.”
Her grandfather always stayed up at night to guard the house in anticipation of possible attacks by white extremists. On nights that he thought were particularly dangerous, family members had to go to bed fully dressed so that they would be ready to flee the house if necessary.
Due to her mother's illness, Parks stopped attending school at the age of sixteen in order to be able to care for her, and thus did not obtain a high school diploma and become a teacher as she had desired.
In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, a barber and civil rights activist, at the age of nineteen. She worked as a seamstress for some time, and her husband encouraged her to go back to school and obtain a high school diploma.
Parks was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger
Jim Crow laws
During the nineteenth century AD, a set of laws were issued in some American states called Jim Crow laws. These laws were intended to ensure that the lives of white and black Americans remained “separate but equal,” and there was segregation in all public spaces and facilities, such as schools, churches, stores, and even elevators and drinking water taps. There was no equality on the ground, and African Americans suffered severe discrimination as a result of that apartheid.
It was natural for many to resent the injustice of these laws and want to resist them and achieve equality for all. Among the organizations founded for this purpose was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, of which Rosa Parks and her husband Raymond joined, and served as secretary of its Montgomery branch until 1956. The movement for justice and equality became known as the "Civil Rights Movement."
Public transportation was among the facilities where racial segregation was enforced. According to Montgomery city law, men, women and children of African descent were required to sit in the back seats of buses. They also had to give up their seats to white passengers if there were no empty seats left at the front.
A “simple act” ignites resistance
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was sitting in the first row of back seats reserved for blacks when some white passengers boarded the bus. The driver asked her and three other black passengers to give up their seats for white passengers to sit in them. The other three passengers complied, but Parks refused.
She was arrested and required to pay a $10 fine for violating the law, and another $4 to pay court costs. But she also rejected that, saying the law was unfair. Instead, I accepted E.D.'s offer. Nixon, president of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, appealed her conviction and challenged segregation laws in Alabama.
Of why she refused to give up her seat that day, Parks wrote in her autobiography: “I was fed up with the harsh treatment I was being subjected to. “I knew that feeling and then I felt like it was time for other white people to treat me the same way.”
“I did not imagine that when I refused to give up my seat, my simple act would help end racial segregation in the South.”
But this is exactly what happened.
Civil rights leaders at the time, led by Martin Luther King, realized that this event represented an important opportunity that should be exploited. These leaders called on all African Americans to boycott Montgomery's public buses in support of Rosa Parks and to protest the injustice of segregation.
The call spread through the distribution of leaflets demanding that black citizens begin a boycott on December 5. Activists formed the Montgomery Improvement League to organize the boycott.
This represented a major challenge for the bus company, as about 70 percent of its users were black, so boycotting them would have caused a huge loss of revenue for the company.
But it was a bigger challenge for the passengers themselves. Some of them had to walk more than 30 kilometers to and from their workplaces.
The first day of the boycott was a success, and in the evening, Martin Luther King, Jr., addressed the church crowd, saying that “the great greatness of American democracy is the right to march for what is right.”
King emerged as the leader of the province, and received numerous death threats. His house was even bombed, but he and his family survived and were not harmed.
The boycott lasted for more than a year, with people from outside Montgomery also participating, and protests against segregation at restaurants, swimming pools, and other public facilities were held across the United States.
Rosa Parks sits on a bus after the Supreme Court's ruling invalidating Alabama's segregation laws
First victory
The boycott inspired by Parks' behavior bore fruit, as the US Supreme Court issued a decision on November 13, 1956, ruling that the segregation laws applied in Montgomery and the state of Alabama in general were unconstitutional, considering them a violation of the "equal protection" clause. From the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.
On December 20 of the same year, Martin Luther King Jr. issued a statement declaring the end of the Montgomery bus boycott and urging black citizens to resume riding them.
The boycott actually ended the next day, and Rosa Parks was among the first African-American citizens to board city buses after segregation ended.
In recognition of her role in sparking the first large-scale protest against racial discrimination in the United States, Rosa Parks became called the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”
Martin Luther King and the pacifist movement he led won their first victory - which was followed by many victories for black rights in America.
Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King
“I haven't reached happiness yet.”
Some accounts claimed that Parks refused to give up her seat because she was tired after a hard day's work, rather than in protest of the unjust treatment of blacks.
Rosa Parks responded to this when she wrote in her autobiography: “I was not physically tired, or any more tired than usual after work. I was not old then, although my image in the minds of some people was that of an old lady. 42 years old. No, I was tired and tired of giving up my rights.”
Rosa was not the only woman who refused to give up her seat to the whites, but others preceded her, led by Claudette Colvin, who did the same thing earlier in 1955, and she was only 15 years old.
But because she was the secretary and member of the Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and because civil liberties movement activists stood by her, her cause became known in a way that other women and girls before her could not have achieved, and it was her cause that forced the city of Montgomery to end segregation on its buses.
Parks remained an active member of the NAACP and supported the civil rights movement in Detroit, Michigan, where she and her husband moved in 1957. From 1965 to 1988, she worked for Congressman John Conyers, helping homeless people obtain housing.
She also founded with her husband in 1987 the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, which aimed to provide educational and employment opportunities for young people, especially those of African descent.
However, Parks was not satisfied with what had been achieved, as she believed that the United States was still failing to protect and respect the lives of its black citizens.
Martin Luther King, who brought the country's attention to his activism by organizing the Montgomery bus boycott, was assassinated less than 10 years after that boycott.
Rosa Parks with former US Vice President Al Gore after receiving the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999
In one of her last media interviews, Parks said, “I do my best to look at life with optimism and look forward to a better day. But I don’t believe there is such a thing as complete happiness. It hurts me that there is still so much Ku Klux Klan activity and so much From racism, I think that when you say you are happy, it means that you have everything you need and everything you want, and there is nothing left to wish for. I have not reached this stage yet."
In 1999, Parks received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor given to civilians in the United States in recognition of their meritorious service to the country.
After her death on October 24, 2005, the US Senate issued a resolution to honor her by placing her body in the rotunda of the Capitol building, where visitors bid farewell to it over two days. Parks was the first woman and the second black person to receive this honor in the United States.
Source: websites