So Our Children Can Soar

Rosa Parks's courageous action that December evening wasn't the first of its kind.

The story is a famous one. On December 1, 1955, Parks was riding a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on her way home from her job as a seamstress. As the bus began to fill, Parks and three other African American passengers were ordered by bus driver James F. Blake to surrender their seats to white passengers. The other three African American passengers eventually got up. Making an instantaneous decision that she will no longer tolerate the discrimination, Rosa Parks remained seated. (Later, Parks would explain that this was not her first encounter with Blake -- he once made her get off the bus and re-enter through the rear door instead.)

Parks was arrested that day for her refusal to vacate her seat for a white man (a crime at the time under the "Jim Crow" segregation laws). But as the story of her courage spread, others were inspired to follow her example. A group of civil rights activities called the Montgomery Improvement Association organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott. (The leader of the boycott? A young Baptist minister, new to the area, by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr.) Passengers stayed off the buses in droves, choosing to walk, carpool, or bike-ride instead -- and with African Americans comprising nearly 75 percent of the riders in the Montgomery area, the bus company feels the effects. The number of buses in the city was cut, while fare prices were raised. And after 381 days, the boycott was ended -- when the Supreme Court ruled Montgomery's segregation laws to be unconstitutional.

Although best remembered for this act of courage, this was by no means Parks's only contribution to the civil rights movement -- or even her first. Rosa and her husband, Raymond Parks, were active members of their local NAACP chapter for many years before the incident in Montgomery. Later in life, Parks would go on to co-found the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development (an organization which aims to target the youth who might be overlooked by other program opportunities, motivating and directing them to reach their full potential). She'd receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 from President Bill Clinton for her lifetime of work, and was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

Parks's 99th birthday would have been this February 4th (she passed away in 2005). But her myriad accomplishments -- best remembered in that iconic act of courage in 1955 -- ensures that her legacy lives on. She was and always will be rightly recognized as the "mother of the modern day civil rights movement."


For more on Rosa Parks:

- Rosa Parks Biography - Academy of Achievement

- Biography of Rosa Louise Parks - from the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development

- Rosa Parks Bus - The Story Behind the Bus

- Rosa Parks Refuses to Give Up Her Seat - How Rosa Parks Fought for Civil Rights (from Scholastic for younger readers)


From our Library's Collection:

- Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story - by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

- Rosa Parks: a Life - by Douglas Brinkley.

- Our Children Can Soar: A Celebration of Rosa, Barack, and the Pioneers of Change - by Michelle Cook.



-- Post by Ms. B