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- Author: Myles Burke
- Role, BBC Culture
4 hours ago
On the night of December 1, 1955, a 42yearold African American woman, tired after a long day of work as a seamstress, boarded a bus to go home in the city of Montgomery, Alabama (USA). She paid her fare and took a free seat on the bus that was reserved for people of color.
Fiftyfive years earlier, Montgomery had passed a law that segregated bus passengers by race. The front part of the bus was reserved for white citizens and the back seats were reserved for black citizens.
And there was also a custom among bus drivers of instructing black passengers to give up their seats if there were no free “whites only” seats available.
As the bus became crowded that winter night, driver James Blake asked Rosa Parks and three other black passengers to give up their seats. But she refused.
“I did it because I felt disrespected as a human being,” she later said in an interview with the BBC.
“I had a hard day at work, [estava] physically tired and mentally irritable. I was fed up with things like this that I had to face as a human being because of our race.
caption,
Rosa Parks (center) after a Supreme Court ruling that ended the 381day boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery
Parks’ refusal had quick repercussions. The bus stopped and she was immediately arrested by the local police.
On December 5, she was found guilty of violating segregation laws, her sentence was suspended, and she was fined $10 plus $4 in court costs. In today’s values, the total value of $14 in 1955 is equivalent to about $160, or about R$785.
Rosa Parks’ arrest was not an isolated incident. It was a result of Jim Crow laws, which aimed to legalize racism and marginalize black Americans.
The laws regulated almost every aspect of daily life, denying black Americans the right to vote and ordering the segregation of schools, toilets, public transportation and restaurants.
Nor was it the first time a person was arrested for refusing to give up their seat to a white passenger. Nine months earlier, 15yearold Claudette Colvin was faced with the same situation.
But this time, Rosa Parks’ quiet boldness would ultimately be the catalyst for change.
Punished for your courage
Rosa Parks’ seemingly calm demeanor contrasted with the veteran activist who had previously served as secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Montgomery.
After his arrest, the Montgomery Association for Progress organized a boycott of the city’s bus system. The protest was led by a young 26yearold pastor named Martin Luther King Jr. (19291968), who later led the civil rights movement in the United States.
The boycott lasted more than a year and the loss of revenue crippled the city’s public transportation system. The situation brought national attention to the institutional racism that permeated Jim Crow laws.
At the same time, the Rosa Parks case continued in the American justice system. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court in December 1956, which ruled that racial segregation on buses was unconstitutional.
But Parks was punished for her courage. She lost her job at the department store during the bus boycott and faced death threats throughout the trial.
The year after the Supreme Court ruling, she and her husband (who also lost his job) moved to Detroit to escape ongoing harassment.
Due to the retaliation following the boycott, the couple struggled to find work in the years that followed. She also suffered from health problems that resulted in high hospital bills.
Nevertheless, Rosa Parks remained deeply committed to civil rights and defended adequate housing and voting rights in Detroit.
She volunteered in the campaign of local Democratic congressional candidate John Conyers (19292019). After her election, Conyers hired her as an assistant in his Detroit office, a position she held until her retirement.
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Rosa Parks at a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony on June 14, 1999
“Mother of the Movement”
Rosa Parks’ arrest ended racial segregation in public transportation in the United States, but its impact was much larger.
“I think if there was a moment, an event in the civil rights movement that began in the 1950s, you can point to the Montgomery bus boycott and Mrs. Parks… that was symbolized by this court and its conviction…” ” Rosa Parks’ lawyer Fred Gray said in a BBC interview.
Parks’ refusal to give up her seat fueled enthusiasm for a mass movement that would ultimately destroy racist segregationist policies. And it became a symbol of the fight for justice and equality.