If you were to tell me today, that an unknown woman from the small town of Tuskegee, Alabama would be the spark to ignite significant changes for the African American Civil Rights Movement, it would be a hard thing to wrap my mind around. By refusing to give up her seat on a bus one day in Montgomery Alabama, Rosa Louise McCauley Parks started a movement like the country had never seen before. She became a symbol of change after her arrest on December 1, 1955. African Americans decided that racial segregation had to end and the days of being treated unequal and unlawful must end. Parks’ arrest triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott; a protest in which thousands refused to take the bus and instead walk in support for her courage and bravery. But I look at her story and wonder, what was …show more content…
This was a period of time that the African Americans knew it was time for a change. Parks refusing to give up her seat was a statement to the community that enough is enough. Rosa Parks was not the first African American to be subjected to such injustices; it was just her case that accelerated a protest movement. It stimulated the Montgomery Boycott. Rosa Parks, through the Montgomery Bus Boycott Movement proved that any level of segregation is unjust. After seeing her arrested, it sparked a one-day boycott of the bus company. After the success of the boycott, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke for the first time in public. In front of a crowd of 5,000, they decided to continue the boycott for as long as necessary to end segregation on buses in Montgomery (W.S.P. 2). This boycott went on to last 381 days. This was the first mass protest of its kind for civil rights. Through King’s leadership, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Montgomery’s bus segregation is unconstitutional and on December 21, 1956 the buses were then made integrated (W.S.P.