Today marks the anniversary of Rosa Parks’ decision to sit down for her rights on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, putting the effort to end segregation on a fast track. Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955, after she refused to give up her seat on a crowded bus to a white passenger. 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. 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 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. In Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks is jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, a violation of the city’s racial segregation laws. Dec. 1, 1955 Deputy D.H. Lackey fingerprints Rosa Parks after her arrest for boycotting public transportation in Montgomery, Alabama. Credit: Wikipedia Four days after hearing civil rights leader Dr. T.R.M. Howard describe what happened to Emmett Till, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. 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. Parks, 42, paid a fine and was briefly locked up. Rosa Parks is fingerprinted by police. Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true,” Parks said in her 1992 book, Rosa Parks: My Story. “I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I On Dec. 1, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was a long time activist and in fact, days before, she had attended a mass meeting about the acquittal of the murderers of Emmett Till. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African-American seamstress, refused to give up her seat to a white man while riding on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. For doing this, Parks was arrested and fined for breaking the laws of segregation. Rosa Parks is fingerprinted by police Lt. D.H. Lackey in Montgomery, Ala., in this Feb. 22, 1956 file photo, two months after refusing to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger on Dec. 1 "To understand the real risks Rosa Parks faced in refusing to give up her seat,” says Donna Braden, Curator of Public Life at The Henry Ford, “we must explore the nature of segregated travel in the ‘Jim Crow South.'" “Jim Crow” laws enforcing racial segregation in southern U.S. states were first enacted in the 1880s by angry and When Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955, she was not the first African American to defy Montgomery’s bus segregation law. Nine months earlier, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. In March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks defied segregation laws by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin did exactly By refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus to a white passenger in 1955, the department store seamstress launched a major movement on the road to equality. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.” Parks courageous act and the subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott led to the integration of public transportation in Montgomery. Her actions were not without consequence. She was jailed for refusing to give up her seat and lost her job for participating in the boycott. The actual bus on which Rosa Parks sat was made available for the public to board and sit in the seat that Rosa Parks refused to give up. [ 153 ] On February 4, 2,000 birthday wishes gathered from people throughout the United States were transformed into 200 graphics messages at a celebration held on her 100th Birthday at the Davis Theater for Rosa Parks decided to not move from her seat on her own. It was only after she was arrested for "disorderly conduct" did the NAACP lawyers choose to take her case and realized that she could be an ideal defendant for appeal. Her case was filed in Alabama's state court which ended up taking too long to go through the appeals process. As Parks later wrote in her autobiography: People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. 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 have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. Sixty-eight years ago on this day, December 1 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested “for disobeying an Alabama law requiring Black passengers to relinquish seats to white passengers when the bus was
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