Rosa Parks' Bus . In 1955, African Americans were still required by a Montgomery, Alabama, city ordinance to sit in the back half of city buses and to yield their seats to white riders if the Rosa Parks launched the Montgomery bus boycott when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. The boycott proved to be one of the pivotal moments of the emerging civil rights movement. For 13 months, starting in December 1955, the black citizens of Montgomery protested nonviolently with the goal of desegregating the city’s public buses. 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. This single act of nonviolent resistance helped spark the Montgomery bus boycott, a 13-month struggle to desegregate the city’s December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956. Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. The National City Lines bus, No. 2857, on which Rosa Parks rode before she was arrested (a GM "old-look" transit bus, serial number 1132), is now on exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum. On the night of Parks' arrest, the Women's Political Council , led by Jo Ann Robinson , printed and circulated a flyer throughout Montgomery's black community that 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 The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956 was a defining moment in the American Civil Rights Movement. Triggered by the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, the 13-month protest campaign reshaped the struggle for racial equality and introduced the world to a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr. 1955-56 U.S. newspaper coverage of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Exact spot on Dexter Avenue where Rosa Parks waited for the bus that changed history. Rosa Parks arrest photo. Rosa Parks arrest record. Rosa Park’s recollections of time spent in jail. Memorandum on taking Rosa Park’s case after her arrest. Rosa’s chronology of the bus boycott The Montgomery Bus Boycott. Soon after her arrest African American civil rights groups began calling for a boycott of the bus system on 5 December, the day Rosa Parks was due to appear in court. The boycott quickly gathered support and approximately 40,000 African American citizens participated. “During the Montgomery bus boycott, we came together and remained unified for 381 days. It has never been done again. The Montgomery boycott became the model for human rights throughout the world.” 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. Jo Ann Robinson, the president of the Women’s Political Council, prepares for the one-day Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott on December 5, 1955 - the day Rosa Parks would be tried in municipal Parks’s act of defiance and the bus boycott were not without historical precedent. When segregation ordinances were passed in southern cities in the late 19th and early 20th century, a number of southern black populations, including Montgomery’s, had organised short-lived boycotts of public transport. 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. The Montgomery Bus Boycott speech reprinted below is one of the first major addresses of Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr. King spoke to nearly 5,000 people at the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery on December 5, 1955, just four days after Mrs. Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat on a Montgomery city bus. The boycott began, Rosa Parks was tried in city court and convicted, the initial meeting of what would become the Montgomery Improvement Association was held, and a mass meeting of black citizens Introduction. On December 1, 1955, a tired Rosa Parks left work as a department store tailor’s assistant and planned to ride home on a city bus. Rosa park is an american icon due to her pivotal role in the civil rights movement, which was sparked by her refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white person in 1955, leading to her arrest and a city wide boycott of the bus system by african americans and ultimately bringing attention to the issue of segregation and inspiring other civil rights protests and movements Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist and the Montgomery Bus Boycott had been proposed for a long time before the actions of Rosa Parks kick-started the plan into action. Also, there was an entire civil rights movement bubbling under the surface, training, organising and planning this non-violent mass protest. The Montgomery Bus Boycott sparked by the arrest of forty-three year old Rosa Parks, when she refused to give her seat up to a white passenger standing on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama on December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, which led to the 381-Day Montgomery bus boycott. Considerable attention has naturally focused on the Montgomery bus boycott that signaled the start of the modern civil rights movement in December, 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus. These recent works have reaffirmed the traditional interpretation of the boycott: Led by Martin Luther King, Jr., and sustained by the
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