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Activism
 Long
before her fateful encounter with the law on Dec.
1, 1955, Rosa Parks had made other quiet stands against injustice.
She walked up and down stairs rather than take the elevators marked
"colored" and often walked a mile to work -- then back -- rather
than ride the bus because, she said, "The buses were the worst
of the options."
 1943:
Elected secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP. "I worked
on numerous cases with the NAACP," Parks has said, "but we did
not get the publicity. ... We didn't seem to have too many successes.
It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be,
and to let it be known that we did not wish to continue being
second-class citizens."
(Ebony, 1988)
1945:
Registers to vote. The administrator failed her the first two
times she took the registration literacy test. The third time,
she wrote down all her answers on another piece of paper in case
she would later need to prove that she should have passed. But
it wasn't necessary. A few weeks later she received her certificate
in the mail.
1956:
Supreme Court rules segregation on Montgomery buses is unconstitutional.
1957:
After losing her job as a seamstress and enduring threats
on her life, Rosa, Raymond and her mother move to Detroit.
1963: Joins in the March on Washington, where Martin Luther
King Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech.
1965:
Begins working in the office of Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.
After serving as an administrative assistant more than 20 years,
she retired in 1988. Parks worked with Conyers on making Martin
Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday.
1979: Receives prestigious Spingarn Award, the NAACP's
highest honor for civil rights contributions.
1987: Helps found the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute
for Self-Development, which motivates youth to reach their potential
through such programs as bank training, substance-abuse prevention
and goal setting. "I see the energy of young people as a real
force for change," she wrote in her 1996 book, "Dear Mrs. Parks:
A Dialogue With Today's Youth."
1994: She is attacked and beaten in her home by an African-American
man who wanted money and apparently did not recognize her. She
wrote after the incident, "I pray for this young man and the conditions
in our country that have made him this way."
1996: Receives highest U.S. civilian honor, the Presidential
Medal of Freedom.
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On a Bus in Montgomery,
Ala.
Dec. 1, 1955
Rosa Parks and three other black passengers were asked to vacate
an entire row of seats just behind the whites-only section of the
bus so that one white man could sit down. Parks recognized the bus
driver, James F. Blake, as the same one who, 12 years earlier, had
evicted her from his bus for boarding through the front door.
At first, the black passengers all remained seated. The driver then
said, "You all make it light on yourselves and let me have those
seats." All stood except Parks, tired from her day's work as a seamtress
at Montgomery Fair department store and tired of enduring such treatment.
When Blake threatened to call the police, she said, "you may go
on and do so." Two police officers boarded the bus to arrest her
and take her to jail. She was booked, fingerprinted, jailed and
fined $14.
Soon after she was released, she was back at work helping to distribute
thousands of fliers urging blacks not to ride the buses on the day
of Parks' trial. What began as a single day of protest continued
381 days, until the U.S. Supreme Court declared Montgomery's bus
segregation unconstitutional.
-- as recounted
by Rosa Parks (Chicago Tribune/KRT) |
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