On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks made her historic civil rights stand by refusing to give up her seat on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Had she noticed who was behind the wheel, she probably 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. 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 Rosa was tired—not just physically, but emotionally. She had grown weary of being regarded as a subordinate member of society. So, when the bus driver told her and three others to give up their seats for a white man, Rosa quietly refused. The driver threatened her, but Rosa stayed calm. She simply said, “No.” In Montgomery, Alabama, when a bus became full, the seats nearer the front were given to white passengers. Montgomery bus driver James Blake ordered Parks and three other African Americans seated nearby to move ("Move y'all, I want those two seats,") to the back of the bus. Three riders complied; Parks did not. Fingerprint card of Rosa Parks’ civil case. Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images “I did not want to be mistreated. I did not want to be deprived of a seat that I had paid for,” Parks said in a 1992 NPR interview. “It was just time there was opportunity for me to take a stand to express the way I felt about being treated in Why Didn't Rosa Parks Stand Up? At the time, bus drivers were allowed to carry guns in order to enforce the segregation laws. By refusing to give up her seat, Rosa Parks might have been grabbed or beaten. Instead, on this particular day, Blake the bus driver just stood outside the bus and waited for the police to arrive. Rosa Parks occupies an iconic status in the civil rights movement after she refused to vacate a seat on a bus in favor of a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1955, Parks rejected a bus driver's order to leave a row of four seats in the "colored" section once the white section had filled up and move to the back of the bus. 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 Six decades ago, Rosa Parks, then 42, uttered perhaps the most famous “No” in American history and helped launch the modern civil rights movement — a struggle that many say continues today. 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. What was the reaction of the bus driver when Mrs. Parks refused to leave her seat? How did she respond to him? What crime was Mrs. Parks charged with when the police arrived and arrested her? Why, in her own words, did Mrs. Parks believe she should not have had to give up her seat on the bus? Explain how the protest movement began to take shape. On December 1, 1955, during a typical evening rush hour in Montgomery, Alabama, a 42-year-old woman took a seat on the bus on her way home from the Montgomery Fair department store where she worked as a seamstress. Before she reached her destination, she quietly set off a social revolution when the bus driver instructed her to move back, and she refused. Rosa Parks, an African American, was Blake said, "Why don't you stand up?" Parks responded, "I don't think I should have to stand up." Blake called the police to arrest Parks. When recalling the incident for , a 1987 public television series on the Civil Rights Movement, Parks said, "When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up, and I said, 'No, I'm not.' Sparking a Social Transformation. It’s one of the most famous moments in modern American civil rights history: On the chilly evening of December 1, 1955, at a bus stop on a busy street in the capital of Alabama, a 42-year-old seamstress boarded a segregated city bus to return home after a long day of work, taking a seat near the middle, just behind the front “white” section. On December 1, 1955, after a long day of work as a seamstress, Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and took a seat. Parks, a black woman, took a seat in the first row of seats in the rear "colored section." was a bus driver. He asked Rosa Parks to move to the back of the bus because another white man wanted to sit down. Rosa Parks was a black woman. She had worked all day and she was tired. So, when the bus driver told her to move, she decided to say no. 2. The police came and took Rosa Parks to jail. Black people in Montgomery, Alabama became This was Rosa Parks’s first conflict with that bus driver. If Rosa Parks had been paying attention, she never would have gotten on the bus driven by the tall, blonde, 43-year-old Blake. James F. Blake, the Montgomery, Ala., bus driver who had Rosa Parks arrested in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, has died. He was 89. Blake died of a heart attack
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