Rosa Parks
by John Ferreras
1. Who is she?
2. A civil rights activist. She lived from February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama to October 24, 2005, where she died in Detroit. She is known from the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
3. Rosa Parks, 1955
4. Rosa Parks is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which she received in 1996. It is just one of many awards she has received for her work in the Civil Rights Movement.
5. Presidential Medal Of Freedom
6. She was married to Raymond Parks until he died.
7. She attended the Highlander Folk School and the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes.
8. Overall Impact
9. She is one of the reasons why racism has significantly decreased, by helping to kickstart the Civil Rights Movement. Today in most places it doesn't matter the race, everyone gets equal rights. Everyone uses the same bathroom. Everyone goes to the same school. The list goes forever on what she has helped change from before to now.
10. Martin Luther King Jr.
11. What did she do?
12. On December 1, 1955, Parks just finished her day of work as a seamstress. She got on a bus to go home and sat on the first row of the 'coloured section.' Eventually the bus was filled with people and the driver decided to move the sign seperating the sections closer to the back for more seats for white people. Rosa and three others were asked to stand up and move. The others complied but Rosa did not move. She got arrested and fined $10 with $4 more for court costs.
13. What impact did the event she caused have?
14. Just hours after she was arrested, the head of the NAACP began forming plans to boycott the Montgomery city buses, in protest to Rosa Parks arrest. The MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association) was created.
15. Black communities were informed of the boycott through ads and handbills. They were encouraged to stay home from work or school, or take a cab or walk to work on December 5,1955, which was the day of Parks' trial.
16. The MIA had hoped for at least a participation rate of half within African Americans. In the end, they ended up having ninety-nine percent of them participate in the boycott.
17. This wasn't planned to be an ongoing boycott but the organizers believed with the results, a longer boycott could be successful. This is exactly what happened.
18. Rosa's trial triggered the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, where for 381 days African Americans refused to ride the bus and rode their bike, walked or carpooled to their destination instead. On November 23, 1956, the court ruled in favour of the MIA and segregated busing was declared unconstitutional.
19. Martin Luther King Jr. was declared as the head of the MIA.
20. After the boycott, he was put on the national spotlight. He later became the leader of the Civil Rights Movement.
21. The bus company suffered thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
22. What she did is looked up at and is seen as a brave act of defiance. Rosa stood up for what she believed in and she was courageous. She did this because she believed it was right. She believed that segregation is wrong and she showed and did something about it.
23. Why did she do this?
