Rosa boarded a bus and took her seat in history
I t seemed like a small act of resistance but, with a simple refusal, Rosa Parks helped spark a movement.
The civil rights campaigner was 42 years old when she told a bus driver she did not want to move from a section of the bus reserved for white passengers only.
Her courageous act of resistance elevated Rosa to the status of hero.
Following her death on October 24, 2005, thousands turned out for her funeral, which lasted a staggering seven hours as civil liberties leaders delivered impassioned tributes.
Rosa was born in 1911 in Alabama when the state, and most of Southern America, operated under strict racial segregation legislation.
These so-called Jim Crow laws were introduced in the late 19th Century and claimed to give black Americans “separate but equal” status – in truth, though, there was no equality for them.
Black citizens were considered second-class, with separate schools, churches, libraries, restaurants, public toilets, drinking fountains and waiting rooms.
Some offices didn’t allow black people to work alongside white people.
In the face of this racism, Rosa joined equal rights group National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People because of her belief in bringing about change for the better.
On December 1, 1955, she boarded the bus home and took a seat in the whites-only section.
The bus filled up and, when a white man boarded, she was asked to move by the driver. But Rosa refused.
In years to come, the myth grew that Rosa was a simple seamstress who needed a seat after a long day’s work.
However, she always insisted she was making a protest.
“People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true,” she later said.
“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 42.
“No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
She was arrested and fined
– but Rosa argued the laws were wrong, not her actions. It sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a movement that was led by civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
The boycott lasted for more than a year, but ultimately proved successful.
The battle was elevated to the United States Supreme Court, which ruled Alabama’s segregation laws were themselves illegal. Not bad, for a simple act of resistance from a seamstress!