Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested that day for violating a city law requiring racial segregation of public buses. On the city buses of Montgomery, Alabama, the front 10 seats were permanently reserved for white passengers. The diagram shows that Mrs. Parks was seated in the first row behind those 10 seats. December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested. On Thursday, December 1, 1955, the 42-year-old Rosa Parks was commuting home from a long day of work at the Montgomery Fair department store by bus. Black On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Alabama for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. Discover how her act of defiance sparked the US civil rights movement. Rosa Parks Arrested. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for disorderly conduct for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. Civil Rights leader E. D. Nixon bailed her out of jail, joined by white friends Clifford Durr, an attorney, and his wife, Virginia. Nine months before Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested in Montgomery for the same act. The city's Black leaders prepared to protest Later, she advised the NAACP Youth Council. Denied the right to vote on at least two occasions because of her race, Rosa Parks also worked with the Voters League to prepare blacks to register to vote. Rosa Parks Was Arrested for Civil Disobedience December 1, 1955 Parks’s arrest was followed by a one-day bus boycott on her court date. Rosa Parks, Negro seamstress, whose refusal to move to the back of a bus touched off the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala. 1956 World-Telegram photo by Ed Palumbo. Retrieved from www.loc.gov . Parks was taken to jail. Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy. On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American seamstress and civil rights activist living in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested for refusing to obey a bus driver who had ordered her and three other African American passengers to vacate their seats to make room for a white passenger who had just boarded. When Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, she was mentally prepared for the moment. Earlier that summer, she attended a workshop on implementing integration at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. Parks' legacy goes beyond the Dec. 1, 1955, arrest On Oct. 24, 2005, Parks died in Detroit. In her life, she was honored with the Martin Luther King Jr. Award and by the NAACP with the Spingarn Medal. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus for white passengers in 1955, she was arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation ordinances. Her action sparked the Montgomery bus boycott , led by the Montgomery Improvement Association and Martin Luther King, Jr. , that eventually succeeded in achieving Rosa Parks Act, 2006 Act approved in the Legislature of the U.S. state of Alabama to allow those considered law-breakers at the time of the Montgomery bus boycott to clear their arrest records of the charge of civil disobedience, including Rosa Parks posthumously. In 1932 she married Raymond Parks, a barber and member of the NAACP. At that time, Raymond Parks was active in the Scottsboro case. In 1943 Rosa Parks joined the local chapter of the NAACP and was elected secretary. Two years later, she registered to vote, after twice being denied. By 1949 Parks was advisor to the local NAACP Youth Council. Four days before the incident, Parks attended a meeting where she learned of the acquittal of Till's murderers. In her autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story (1992), Parks declares her defiance was an intentional act: "I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people Rosa Parks. [Reflections on her arrest for refusing to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, December 1, 1955], ca. 1956. Autograph manuscript. Rosa Parks Papers. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Who is Rosa Parks? Rosa Parks, born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama, is celebrated as a pivotal figure in the American civil rights movement. Her most notable act of defiance occurred on December 1, 1955, when she refused to yield her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. The roots of the bus boycott began years before the arrest of Rosa Parks. The Women’s Political Council (WPC), a group of black professionals founded in 1946, had already turned their attention to Jim Crow practices on the Montgomery city buses. In a meeting with Mayor W. A. Gayle in March 1954, the council's members outlined the changes they William Pretzer was five years old when Rosa Parks of Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested. It was December 1, 1955. The 42-year-old seamstress was on a city bus, en route home after a day’s work The police arrested Parks at the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code. She was taken to police headquarters, where, later that night, she was April 14, 2005: Parks and the hip-hop group Outkast reach an out-of-court settlement regarding their 1998 song "Rosa Parks." October 24, 2005: Parks dies at the age of 92
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