How Did Rosa Parks Affect The Civil Rights Movement

Karah Allison

Mrs.Schaller

Honors English 9

23 May 2023

Rosa parks

One woman changed the whole course of the civil rights movement by simply not standing up. Rosa Parks refused to move her seat on the bus which sent the town to fight even harder to fix the racial injustice. she knew she would get in trouble but she didn't care and had just wanted some type of change. Her staying seated was not the only thing she did to help; she also worked tirelessly in other organizations to help. Rosa Parks' courage and will to fight has given her the name “mother” of the civil rights movement, but it took her a whole lifetime to embody this ideal.

Rosa Parks had a pretty normal childhood before her involvement in the civil rights movement. Her full name

In 1955 she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man. She was not the first one to not move on a bus. A 15-year old named Claudette Colvin did the same thing just 9 months before Rosa Parks. Her not giving up her seat set the community into a boycott which was known as the bus Boycott. Martin Luther King helped lead the boycott along with the Montgomery Improvement Association. During this boycott, the community did not ride on any white-owned transportation. The community would give rides to each other to keep the boycott going. The boycott lasted 1 year and only stopped when the bus segregation was lifted and called unconstitutional by the US supreme court. She was arrested after the incident and she got fired from her job. ”’People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”’(“Norwood, Arlisha.”). Her decision to not move was deliberate and was not a heat of the moment thing. Rosa Parks changed the course of the movement and showed people just how wrong the colored people were being

She and her husband both lost their jobs and were forced to leave their homes and move. They ended up in Michigan after living in Virginia and Detroit. Rosa and Raymond started the Institute for Self-Development. It has a summer program called pathway to freedom for teens to learn about the work that went into the civil rights movement. ”“I do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day, but I don’t think there is any such thing as complete happiness. It pains me that there is still a lot of Klan activity and racism. I think when you say you’re happy, you have everything that you need and everything that you want, and nothing more to wish for. I haven’t reached that stage yet.”(“Academy of Achievement”). The Civil Rights movement didnt get rid of racism 100% but it definitely helped but racism might never be gone completely. She released her autobiography “Rosa Parks: My story” in 1992. Rosa Parks was a critical Civil rights Activist and spent most of her life fighting for her