Rosa Parks Sparks the Civil Rights Movement Against Segregation

The Montgomery bus boycott was year long protest in Alabama. The issue of segregation seating had long been a source of resentment in Montgomery in black community. African–Americans were forced to seat in the back of the bus. The boycott was to protest racially segregated seating.

On December 1955, a woman named Rosa parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. Many people such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Jo Ann Robinson, and some ministers took advantage of the arrest to start the boycott. First the Montgomery Improvement Association tried to end the boycott by negotiating with the buses company, and when the companies refuses so black try to find out another way to deal with the situation. White people in the mid-time did not like the fact that black was acting so peacefully and tried to end the boycott. Finally the U.S. Supreme Court decided that segregation on buses was unconstitutional.

Many historians date the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the United States to December 1st, 1955. That day was the day that a unknown seamstress by the name of Rosa Parks took her seat on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was tired, and was on her way home, when a white passenger boarded and requested that she relinquish her seat to the man, which was supposed to happen according to Jim Crow laws.

However, Rosa refused and was arrested, for violating the city ordinance. Rosa’s arrest seemed a mere step in the right direction but it actually started a chain reaction, in civil rights movements. After Parks was arrested The black community mobilized around her, and began one of the biggest bus boycotts in history. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted for 381 days, resulting in a change of policy on that bus line. Furthermore the case went all the way to the Supreme court where, it was decided that all segregation be outlawed on public transportation.

Her lonely act of defiance began a movement that ended legal segregation in the state and soon in all of America. She became a beacon of freedom and an icon that was known for fighting for civil rights against segregation. She was loved by freedom loving people everywhere, and will never be forgotten even after her death in 2005.

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