Most historians date the beginning of the United States civil right movement to December 1, 1955. That day Rosa Parks took the bus because she was feeling tired after a long day in the department store where she worked as a seamstress. She was sitting in the middle section, very glad to be off her feet at last, when a white man boarded the bus and demanded that her row be emptied because the white section was full. The others in the row moved to the bach of the bus, but Parks didn’t feel like standing for the rest of the ride, and she quietly refused to move. At that time the white bus driver threatened to call the police unless Parks gave up her seat but she just said, ;Go ahead and call them.
; When the police arrived the bus driver was really mad, and when he was ask whether he wanted Parks to be arrested or let off with a warning he insisted on arrest. She was arrested, jailed and fined fourteen dollars. When word of Park’s arrest broke out, it spread quickly. A boycott of the Montgomery bus company was formed by Martin Luther King Jr. . About 90% of the blacks who usually rode the buses joined the boycott and found other means of transportation.
The bus company lost a vast amount of money because 70% of the people on the buses were blacks. Rosa Parks Lost her job as a result of the Montgomery protest. A Supreme Court decision outlawed racial segregation on public transportation. That ruling ended the 382 day boycott from the buses. Rosa Parks was born to James and Leona McCauley in 1913. At the age of two she moved into her grandparents house with her mother and younger brother.
At the age of eleven she enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls. The school’s philosophy of self-worth was consistent with her mom’s advice to “take advantage of opportunities, no matter how few they were. ” There were few opportunities back the indeed for blacks. So on that day in 1955 see toke on a very challenging opportunity. When Parks was twenty years old she married Raymond Parks.
She also became an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), were she worked as the secretary of the Montgomery chapter. She was one of the first woman to join. They did not get much publicity even though they got many cases of things like murder or rape.
