Rosa Parks og borgerrettighedsbevægelsen

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was born on February the 4th 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama, USA. Rosa Parks was a black activist in the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement was a movement that took place mainly during the 1950s and the 1960s for black people to gain equal rights under the law in the United States. So what happened was that Rosa boarded a bus and took a seat the first rows designated for colored people. As the bus Rosa was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. The driver of Rosa’s bus stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row, asking four black passengers to give up their seats. The city's bus ordinance didn't specifically give drivers the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone, regardless of color. However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of moving back the sign separating black and white passengers and, if necessary, asking black passengers give up their seats to white passengers. If the black passenger said no to give the seat to a white passenger, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed. But Rosa refused to give up her seat. The bus driver then called the police and got her arrested. On the evening that Rosa Parks was arrested, E.D. Nixon, head of the local chapter of the NAACP, (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) began forming plans to organize a boycott of Montgomery's city buses. Ads were placed in local papers, and handbills were printed and distributed in black neighborhoods. Members of the African-American community were asked to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5, 1955—the day of Rosa's trial—in protest of her arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab or walk to work. They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, electing Montgomery newcomer Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The MIA ( Montgomery Improvement Association ) believed that Rosa Parks' case provided an excellent opportunity to take further action to create real change. When Rosa arrived at the courthouse for the trial that morning with her attorney, Fred Gray, she was greeted by a bustling crowd of around 500 local supporters, who rooted her on. Following a 30-minute hearing, Rosa was found guilty of violating a local ordinance and was fined $10, as well as a $4 court fee. After that black residents refused to right public transport systems. With the transit company and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift its enforcement of segregation on public buses, and the boycott officially ended. The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African-American community, made the Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history. Rosa’s act of disobedience and the Montgomery bus boycott became important symbols in the civil rights movement. The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against racial segregation on the public transport system of Montgomery, Alabama. The campaign lasted from December 5th, 1955 - the Monday after Rosa Parks got arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white person - to December 20th, 1956 lasting 1 year. She became an icon of resistance to racial segregation which means to keep people of different races apart. Rosa had also attended a center for training activists for workers rights and racial equality. The reason she did this was that she was tired of giving in. Unfortunately, this also had consequences as she got fired from her job and received death threats for years. Rosa luckily got a job as a secretary shortly after. Rosa then got dementia in her final years and died at the of 92 years old on October the 24th, 2005. Thank you for listening to my presentation.