Rosa's Activism Begins with the NAACP. Rosa Parks' involvement in civil rights activism began to take shape when she joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943. As part of the Montgomery chapter, Parks served as both the youth leader and secretary to E.D. Nixon, the president of the chapter. Rosa Parks became a civil rights icon when she refused to leave her bus seat for a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. In 1932, when she was 19, Rosa McCauley married Raymond Parks, an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Parks began her civil rights activism shortly after graduating from high school, and continued until shortly before her death in 2005 at age 92. At this point, many people do know that Parks was active with her local NAACP chapter and was not merely a tired woman who wanted to rest her feet. But, Theoharis explains, even that expanded Although the claims that she was an outsider and that her arrest had been planned by the NAACP were false, Mrs. Parks was a militant NAACP activist who had previously been involved in a bus protest. On 1 December 1955 local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leader Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Rosa, discharged from Montgomery Fair department store, began setting up rides and garnering public support for the boycott and the NAACP. For three hundred and eighty-one days, African American citizens of Montgomery walked, carpooled, and took taxis rather than city buses. Parks founded the Montgomery NAACP Youth Council in the early 1940s. Later, as secretary of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, she traveled throughout the state interviewing victims of discrimination and witnesses to lynchings. Parks was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Award by the NAACP, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal. She has been described as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Raymond was a member of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Rosa’s interest in equality allowed her to join the NAACP and work in the Montgomery, Alabama chapter as well as the position of secretary to the chapter’s President. It may have been planned by the NAACP and Rosa Parks, but it wasn't staged. The bus driver who ordered her to the back, and the folks who arrested and prosecuted her weren't in on it. The NAACP and Rosa were relying upon these people to behave as unfairly as they always did Thursday marks the 61st anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white man — an action that got her arrested, sparked the Montgomery bus boycott Rosa Parks (1913—2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. Her actions The NAACP planned to then use its secretary, Rosa Parks, who was seen as more respectable and an "inherently impressive person," for the sitting-on-the-bus protest they'd use to call for the boycott. There is a video on the subject if you're interested, although if anyone has a more serious source I'd love to see it. Rosa Parks did know of her arrest, so in a way Colvin could have contributed to Rosa reaching her breaking point. The NAACP decided to publicly pursue Rosa’s legal case after her arrest because there was momentum. Parks, Rosa. Rosa Parks Papers: Miscellany, -2005; Automobile records and drivers licenses; 1968 to 1988. - 1988, 1968.Manuscript/Mixed Material. At the front of a bus, previously reserved for white riders, is Rosa Parks, face turned to the window to her left, seemingly lost in thought as she rides through Montgomery, Ala. In the seat behind her is a young white man looking to his right, his face hard, almost expressionless. The Library of Congress, which keeps comprehensive records of documents related to Rosa Parks, has a copy of Parks' vehicle registration and a receipt of sale for a two-door 1965 Ford dated April Rosa Parks, a black woman, made a courageous decision that day. She refused to give up her seat to a white person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Rosa had planned this act of defiance to take a stand against the unfair rule that segregated people based on their race. Rosa Parks wasn’t just an ordinary woman. When Rosa passed away on October 24, 2005, at the age of 92, people around the world mourned her loss. Her body lay in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, an honor reserved for only a few great Americans. Why Rosa Parks Matters. Rosa Parks’ story is a reminder that courage doesn’t always come with loud speeches or grand gestures.
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