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Rosa Parks Research Paper

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Standing Up While Sitting Down Rosa Parks has influenced many people throughout the United States by standing up for what she believes in. “Many historians date the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the United States to December 1,1955. That was the day when an unknown seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger” (Rosa Parks Biography). Rosa Parks, an AfricanAmerican woman, became a civil rights activist, inspired the modern civil rights movement, served on the staff of the U.S. Representatives, and transpired as a civil rights icon. Rosa Parks has changes the world in the eyes of many people.
“Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4th, 1913, to …show more content…

Who would have ever thought African-American women refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man would change history? “Her act of resistance that day unleashed a movement that helped to end legal segregation in the U.S., and cemented her as the “mother of the Civil Rights Movement” (Tarlo). This was not the first time that Rosa Parks was standing up for equality for all people. Rosa and her husband were active members of the Montgomery, Alabama’s local chapter of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1943. They worked with the NAACP for many years trying to improve the lives of African Americans in the segregated South. “I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP,” Mrs. Parks recalled, “but we did not get the publicity. There were cases of flogging, peonage, murder, and rape. We didn’t seem to have too many successes. It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be, and to let it be known that we did not wish to continue being second-class citizens” (Rosa Parks …show more content…

“Although she had become a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks suffered hardship in the months following her arrest in Montgomery and the subsequent boycott” (Editors). Rosa and her husband lost their jobs. In 1957, unable to find work in Montgomery, Rosa and her husband moved to Detroit, Michigan. In 1964, Rosa began working as a secretary and receptionist in U.S. Representative John Conyer’s congressional office where she continued to work until she retired in 1988.
After the death of Rosa’s husband in 1977, Rosa founded the Rosa and Raymond Park’s Institute for Self-Development. “The Institute sponsors an annual summer program for teenagers called Pathways to Freedom. The young people tour the country in buses, under adult supervision, learning the history of their country and of the Civil Rights Movement” (Rosa Parks Biography). In 1996, Rosa Parks was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom by former President Clinton and in 1999 received a Congressional Gold

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