The Legacy of Rosa Parks Essay Example

Parks often rode the public buses, and she was fed up with how blacks were treated. Some drivers made black Americans pay at the front, get off, and get back on by the back door. Most people gave in and did not make a fuss but by the mid-1950’s black Americans were just plain tired of how they were being treated.

The idea of a bus boycott had been around for a while and had been tried. A boycott meant that people would not ride the buses, and it would cost the bus companies a lot of money. This did not work too well – what was needed was a bus rider who would challenge the segregation rules outright. One of the leaders of the NAACP in Alabama was Edgar Nixon His idea was to have someone challenge bus rules but it had to be someone respectable, and a quiet hard working woman such as Rosa Parks might be more effective than a man. As it turned out, Rosa would be the one to challenge the bus segregation laws and have her place in history.

On December 1, 1955 Rosa left her job as a dressmaker in a department store to head home. She was tired and the bus was crowded. She and a few other black riders were sitting in the middle of the bus, where both whites and blacks could sit. When some white people got on the driver ordered the black passengers, including Rosa, to give up their seats. Rosa had reached her breaking point. She was tired after a long day of work and was angry that she should have to lose her

seat just because of her race. She certainly did not want to stand at the back. After the driver told the black passengers to move, it suddenly went quiet in the bus. Rosa would not move and she was steadfast about it. The driver began to lose his patience and told her he would have her arrested. Rosa quietly said, “You may do that”.

Rosa was taken to the Montgomery police station where she was arrested and had her fingerprints taken. The NAACP leader in Alabama, Edgar Nixon, encouraged her not to pay the fine but rather take the case to court. He found a lawyer for her, a white man named Clifford Durr, who paid the one hundred dollars charge to get Rosa out of jail.

Although Rosa’s refusal to move on the bus was a crucial moment in the civil rights movement, Edgar Nixon also played an important role. He organized the Montgomery bus boycott that followed the arrest of Rosa Parks. She was to be tried in court on December 5, and this was the day chosen for the boycott to protest the treatment black Americans received because of segregation laws.

Rosa pleaded not guilty in court and refused to pay her fine of fourteen dollars. The same day the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed and Martin Luther King was chosen as their leader. Dr. King would lead the civil rights movement up until his death in 1968. He and the members of the MIA decided a one-day boycott was not enough and they urged black Americans not to ride the buses in Montgomery until the laws were changed for good.

The boycott lasted a long

time, almost a year. Not everyone agreed with the action and there were incidents of violence directed at black leaders. The bus boycott finally ended on December 21, 1956 when segregation laws relating to public buses were struck down.

Rosa Parks lived a long life. She continued her work as an activist but she and her husband decided to move north to Detroit in 1957, as it was becoming hard for them to find work in Montgomery. Her coffin was flown to Montgomery and then to the Capitol in Washington so that government officials and ordinary people could pay their respects to the woman whose actions helped change a nation.