Rosa Parks and her Affect on the Civil Rights Movement

In Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, Ms. Rosa Parks was told to give up her bus seat for a white male passenger. She refused. This refusal led to her arrest, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and eventually a change in American civil rights. Because of the initiative that Rosa Parks took, many leaps in the Civil Rights Movement were made toward equality.

On December 5 of the same year, after Rosa Parks was imprisoned, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began with Martin Luther King, Jr. as the leader, and it lasted eleven months. The Bus Boycott was crucial to the integration of buses in the Southern United States. If Ms. Parks case had not brought media attention, many similar situation would have kept happening. By standing up for herself, Rosa Parks was able to bring attention to one of the many social injustices to black Americans in the South. The Bus Boycott allowed to the reversal of bus segregation in Alabama on December 21, 1956. Not only did the Bus Boycott change law, but it also changed the views of many black Americans about themselves. Before, many believed that they were inferior to white Americans and that there was nothing that they could do about the separate and UNEQUAL ways of life between white and black Americans. They now knew better. Most African Americans in Montgomery and in the South adopted a nonviolent philosophy to bring change to their predicament. In his speech at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. states, “The basic conflict is not really over the buses. Yet we believe that, the method we use in dealing with equality in the buses can eliminate injustice within ourselves, we shall at the same time attacking the basis of injustice -- man’s hostility to man. This can only be done when we challenge the white community to re-examine its assumptions as we are now prepared to reexamine ours” (12). Black Americans were ready for the challenge that this new way of life would bring and they were ready to fight for their rights as American citizens. Although Rosa Parks bravery, led to a change in Alabama law, the sate government still tried to keep desegregation in Alabama and all throughout the South from happening.

Even after Ms. Parks fought for social equality, it was evident that black Americans were still not receiving fair treatment on the bus system. So on May 14, 1962, seven black Americans and six white Americans (a.k.a. Freedom Riders) started from WAshington D.C. on a trip that would take them through the heart of the racist South to prove that the South was not following desegregation laws. This mixed group of Americans changed the Civil Rights Movement in a momentous way. After the Freedom Riders were arrested and severely beaten in Montgomery, Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, and Jackson, Mississippi (to name the major cities, not all of the cities), the Civil Rights Movement had a huge upsurge of support from both black and white Americans who wanted to help change the way that black Americans were being treated in the South. Though the Civil Rights Act would not be put into effect until July 2, 1964, the journey that the Freedom Riders made brought forth many changes through America about the treatment of black Americans.

Rosa Parks stood up (well, sat down) for what she believed in on the cold day in 1955, sparking a battle that would last almost a decade, but resulted in a law that would help bring equality to black Americans in the South. 

Work Cited

King, Martin Luther, and James Melvin Washington. I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World. 1. ed. New York: Harper Collins, 1992. Print.