Pink Parks she was a black American woman who was scarred for refusing to obey a segregationist law that existed on mass transit in Montgomery, Alabama, United States. Her act, in 1955, resulted in her arrest and, in retaliation, the African-American population of the city mobilized to boycott the buses.
Rosa Parks' action was the trigger for the beginning of the movements that fought for the civil rights of the North American blacks. She was one of the great icons of this anti-racist activism and she championed related causes throughout her life. Her performance earned her many honors in life and after her death.
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Birth and Youth
Pink Louise McCauley (known as Rosa Parks after her marriage) was born in Tuskegee, Alabama on the 4th day of February 1913. Her parents were James McCauley , who worked as a carpenter, and Leona Edwards , who worked as a teacher. Rosa's parents separated when she was two years old, and she moved to Pine Level in Metro Montgomery, Alabama's capital.
At Pine Level, Rosa Parks came into contact with a family environment that defended the ideas of racial equality . While living in an anti-racist family, she grew up in an openly racist community. She, for example, had to attend schools for black students and had to walk to school because the town of Pine Level only offered transportation to white students.
At age 16, Rosa dropped out of school to work and care for her grandmother and mother, who were sick. In 1932, at age 19, married Raymond Parks , who worked as a barber. Rosa Parks' husband encouraged her to finish her studies, and in 1933, she finished high school.
Activism
As we have seen, Rosa Parks grew up in a family environment that upheld the ideals of racial equality. The situation did not change after she got married because her husband was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , the NAACP , an organization that defended the rights of the African-American population in the United States.
Raymond Parks took part in the campaign in defense of nine black men falsely accused of raping two women. This case became known as Scott s boron Boys, and Raymond led a committee that acted on this case, as well as raising funds to ensure their defense. Raymond and Rosa Parks' home often hosted NAACP meetings.
In the 1940s, she officially joined the NAACP, becoming secretary from the organization in late 1943, a position she held until 1957. At the encouragement of her husband, Rosa Parks still registered to vote and managed to complete her registration in 1945. At that time, supremacist groups tried to prevent blacks from registering to vote. vote.
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Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks was marked in the history of the United States by an act carried out in December 1955. The city of Montgomery, where she lived, as well as other places in the southern United States, had segregationist legislation, that is, that promoted discrimination against African Americans.
In this city, there was a law that did not allow blacks to sit in the same seats as whites on buses. When a bus was full, the driver would order a black person to get up and give his seat to the white passenger. Rosa Parks had already had bad experiences on the city buses, but in 1955 she decided to have enough.
She worked as a seamstress and on December 1st, she returned home after her workday. Along the way, the bus driver demanded that Rosa Parks and three other black people stand up and give up their seats to white people. She, however, refused to get up and to give up her seat, and the bus driver then called the police. Parks was arrested .
Rosa Parks' refusal to stand up was not physical fatigue, but because she didn't want to have to go through discriminatory situations like that anymore. Her arrest served as a trigger for the African-American community of Montgomery to mobilize in her defense. Thus, funds were raised to pay the bail on the 1st.
Rosa Parks was not the first woman to take this step. That same year, a 15-year-old student had already performed the same action. This student was called Claudette Colvin and she also lived in Montgomery, Alabama. Colvin's action came nine months before Parks' action.
Anyway, Rosa Parks' action served as a fuse for the African-American community of Montgomery to come together against discrimination. It was decided that the bus service would be boycotted by the African Americans who lived in the city until segregation against blacks ended. In that boycott a name emerged:Martin Luther King Jr .
The African-American community started walking to their jobs, and rides started to be organized to take as many people as possible. This mobilization of African Americans in this case marked the beginning of movement hair civil rights , who fought racial segregation in the United States. The boycott lasted 385 days and caused the US Supreme Court to outlaw segregation within buses. Martin Luther King ended up becoming a great icon in this fight, along with Rosa Parks.
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Last years
Despite the victory won in 1956, this whole fighting process was extremely complicated for Rosa Parks and her husband. They, like other blacks in Montgomery, were persecuted for mobilizing against segregation. Rosa Parks and her husband lost their jobs, Martin Luther King had bombed her home, and Rosa Parks constantly received calls from white supremacists threatening her .
As they couldn't get new jobs and threats were constant, Rosa Parks and her husband moved to Detroit , a city in the state of Michigan. There she began working as a receptionist and secretary to Congressman John Conyers . She worked for this congressman until 1988, when she retired.
The fact that she moved from Montgomery didn't make her give up activism. In Detroit, she worked with the congressman on social causes and remained an important personality in the anti-racist struggle in the United States. In addition, she became involved with many other entities that acted against racism.
In 1977, Raymond Parks passed away, leaving Rosa Parks a widow. The two never had children. In 1992, she wrote an autobiography, and in the late 1990s, her physical and mental health began to deteriorate. Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005, at 92 years of age. She received numerous honors throughout her life (and after her death) for her role in the fight against racism.
Image credits
[1] Harlin Design and Shutterstock
[2] Gino Santa Maria and Shutterstock