This was one of the first major steps in the civil rights movement. The Freedom Riders were a group of civil rights activists whose sole aim was to end racial segregation. It started in 1961 when student protestors rioted against racial segregation. Many rode on buses to segregated states in USA in order to test the laws of segregation. There were even white people who sat next to the black people in order to show their support that they were all equal.
On December 1st, 1955, Rosa was asked to give her seat to a white man, she was extremely tired but she also knew that she had paid the bus fair just like everyone else and felt that she had the right to remain seated therefore, refused to grant her seat to the white man, reason why she then was arrested. Mrs. Parks had an affect in many people and the world. She became and international icon of resistance to racial segregation and she also organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr. helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement. She inspired Dr. King Jr. to form the Montgomery Improvement Association.
Rosa was born on February 4th, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her father, James McCauley was a carpenter and her mother, Leona Edwards, was a teacher. Growing up she was sick most of the time and was a small child. Eventually her mother and father separated. Her mother took her and her brother to live in Pine Level, a town near Montgomery.
However, even after its abolishment, blacks were still kept in slavery and were treated poorly and unequal to other, white Americans. This abuse was much more common in the Southern states due to the more racist nature of the white people who lived there and the fact that the Southern states had originally fought to keep Black Slavery legal. Soon after the Civil War was won by the Northern States, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment were brought into congress. The thirteenth amendment stated that all Slavery must end in America; the fourteenth amendment stated that everyone living on American soil should gain citizenship and the fifteenth amendment stated that all citizens should gain the right to vote. These amendments could be considered as vital moves towards black equalities, if they had worked.
Angela Davis was born January 6, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama to two highly educated parents, both of whom where educators themselves. As it was for all black Americans, Angela’s childhood was faced with much humiliation of racial segregation. Racial segregation existed throughout the United States. Angela was born amid Jim Crow Laws: “where state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans” (Wikipedia).
The Real Rosa Parks Rosa Parks is the women who wouldn’t move to the back of the bus and give her seat up in the white section to a white person. This started a boycott on the buses in Montgomery, and made lots of controversy. Rosa earned the title “Mother of the civil right movement” by refusing to give up her seat. Before any of this happened she spent 12 years doing things with her local NAACP chapter, along with other activist. Rosa attended training sessions at the Tennessee Labor and Civil Right School while there; she familiarized herself with previous challenges to segregation.
This movie reveals a sign of regress of our society because, most lynching incidents in America which occurred in public spaces and were usually the result of rape allegations involving black male supposedly assailants and white women who were purportedly their victims has not been seeing as a pure act of cruelty and hated from white supremacist calling for “justice”. A proof of this is that today, the noose appears in secluded areas such as school grounds and workplaces (Hyde Turner tragedy at work Conrald, Texas) as a result of racial tension in the U.S. Years after the Civil Right Movement, the battle for respect among all people regardless of the color of their skins and the end of racist organization or movement is far from over. A change has been operated but it is not enough to prevent such actions in the first democratic country of the world. In my opinion, the fact CNN host Kyra Phillips emphasize the importance that “youth people understand the horrors of the noose.” shows that American youth today are more sensitive about racial violence than previous generations of Americans. The essential reasons is because these major racial acts of violence occurred in the past so we should now be able to look at it from a clear, reasonably coherent and tolerant point of view in order to make these events stop.
I have chosen to write about Ms. Rosa Parks, the mother of the Civil Rights Movement. December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. She was subsequently arrested and the Montgomery Bus Boycott was born. Ms. Parks’ trial was set for December 5, 1955. The black community organized and distributed 35,000 leaflets asking Blacks to stay off the buses that day.
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE USA The Boston Tea Party was one of the most famous acts of civil disobedience in American history. Susan B. Anthony was arrested for illegally voting in the United States House of Representatives elections, 1872 in order to protest female disenfranchisement.Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, James Bevel, Rosa Parks, and other activists in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s used civil disobedience techniques. Among the most notable civil disobedience events in the U.S. occurred when Rosa Parks refused to move on the bus when a white man tried to take her seat. Although 15-year old Claudette Colvin had done the same thing nine months earlier, Parks' action led directly to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
What was the short term significance of Rosa Parks? Rosa Parks was a 42 year-old seamstress that, through a simple act of defiance would kick start the Civil rights Movement in America. In 1955, she began the chain of events by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. This sparked outrage in the African-American community and was met with a boycott that would become the most famous boycott in the struggle for Black rights in America, commencing on the December 1st 1955 until Dec. 20th 1956. She was made a figure-head of the NAACPs cases as unlike many others (such as Claudette Colvin) was the ‘perfect’ citizen regardless of colour.