Alina Bhatia's List: Rosa Parks

• An outraged black community formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to organize a boycott of the city bus system. Partly to forestall rivalries among local community leaders, citizens turned to a recent arrival to Montgomery, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. The newly-installed pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, King was just 26 years old but he had been born to leadership:

• We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.

   

  Under King’s leadership, boycotters organized carpools, while black taxi drivers charged boycotters the same fare--10 cents--they would have paid on the bus. By auto, by horse-and-buggy, and even simply by walking, direct, nonviolent political action forced the city to pay a heavy economic price for its segregationist ways.

• In the end, the desegregation of the Montgomery bus system required not only Rosa Parks’s personal initiative and bravery and King’s political leadership, but also an NAACP-style legal effort. As the boycotters braved segregationist opposition, desegregationist attorneys cited the precedent of Brown v. Board of Education in their court challenge to the Montgomery bus ordinance. In November 1956, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected the city’s final appeal, and the segregation of Montgomery buses ended. Thus fortified, the civil rights movement moved on to new battles.

   

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• . Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus spurred a city-wide boycott. The city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift the law requiring segregation on public buses. Rosa Parks received many accolades during her lifetime, including the NAACP's highest award
• "powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions"
• This was accomplished with a line roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front of the bus and African-American passengers in the back.
• . She took a seat in the first of several rows designated for "colored" passengers. Though the city's bus ordinance did give drivers the authority to assign seats, it didn't specifically give them 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 requiring black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers, when no other seats were available.

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• "Why don't you stand up?" to which Rosa replied, "I don't think I should have to stand up." The driver called the police and had her arrested. Later, she recalled that her refusal wasn't because she was physically tired, but that she was tired of giving in.
• Members of the African-American community were asked to stay off the buses Monday, December 5 th in protest of Rosa's arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African-American community not riding the bus, organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful.
• The MIA believed that Rosa Parks' case provided an excellent opportunity to take further action to create real change.
• 40,000 African-American commuters walked, some as far as 20 miles to get to work.

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• Civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, spurring the Montgomery boycott and other efforts to end segregation.
• Although she had become a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks suffered hardship as a result. She lost her job at the department store and her husband lost his after his boss forbade him to discuss his wife or their legal case. They were unable to find work and eventually left Montgomery.
• Rosa Parks received many accolades during her lifetime including the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP's highest award. She also received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award.
• On September 9, 1996 President Bill Clinton awarded Rosa Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the U.S. executive branch. The next year, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch. In 1999, Time magazine named Rosa Parks one of the 20 most influential people of the 20th century.

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• was arrested and fined for violating a city ordinance, but her lonely act of defiance began a movement that ended legal segregation in America,
• he boycott lasted 382 days and brought Mrs. Parks, Dr. King, and their cause to the attention of the world.