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. Y ou probably think you know the story of Rosa Parks, the seamstress who refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Ala., 60 years ago—on Dec. 1, 1955—and thus galvanized the bus 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 The "Drunk History" video states that Rosa Parks boarded the bus and sat down in the white section. Actually, she took a seat directly behind the white section. However, as the bus filled up after a few more stops, the bus driver told Parks to give her seat to a white man who had been left standing. She refused and was arrested. Rosa Parks (center, in dark coat and hat) rides a bus at the end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Montgomery, Alabama, Dec. 26, 1956. Don Cravens/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images. Most of us know Rosa Parks as the African American woman who quietly, but firmly, refused to give up her bus seat to a white person Dec. 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama. That small act of 1. Parks was not the first African American woman to be arrested for refusing to yield her seat on a Montgomery bus. Nine months before Parks was jailed, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first Rosa Parks was the first black woman to exercise civil disobedience on a Montgomery bus. Nearly nine months before Rosa Parks’s famous arrest, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested on a 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 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. So when Parks was arrested a few months later, the stage was already set for a boycott. Responding to the arrest of Parks was E.D. Nixon, a Pullman train porter who led the state chapter of the Gayle lawsuit (Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith) who were arrested in Montgomery for not giving up their bus seats months before Parks. NAACP organizers believed that Parks was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation There is definitely some truth to the idea that Colvin was passed over as a poster child, namely, because she was a child. 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. Figure 1: (left) Rosa Parks’ mug shot from Montgomery City Jail, Montgomery, 1955.(right) Recreation of Ms. Parks sitting on a Montgomery bus, staged and taken on December 21, 1956, the day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregated buses illegal. Rosa Parks (born February 4, 1913, Tuskegee, Alabama, U.S.—died October 24, 2005, Detroit, Michigan) was an American civil rights activist whose refusal to relinquish her seat on a public bus precipitated the 1955–56 Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama, which became the spark that ignited the civil rights movement in the United States. Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913, to Leona (née Edwards), a teacher, and James McCauley, a carpenter.In addition to African ancestry, one of Parks's great-grandfathers was Scots-Irish, and one of her great-grandmothers was a part–Native American slave. 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 was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger on Dec. 1, 1955. However the photograph of her getting fingerprinted that has been widely circulated actually took place in 1956, when she was arrested a second time – one month into the Montgomery bus boycott that her first arrest ignited. This is one of those things that gets mixed up a bit. Rosa Parks didn’t set out that day to protest the segregated bussing. She was an activist, and she was also selected as the poster child for that particular cause over other possible candidates because civil rights activists believed she presented a better picture to the public than, for example, a young unwed pregnant woman in a similar 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 “It was completely a 100- percent staged event,” the biographer said. “There was nothing random about it.” Parks was not the first black bus rider in Montgomery to refuse to give up her seat.
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