The name of Rosa Parks will be forever engraved into American history for her crucial contribution to the launch of a mass civil rights movement. On December 1, 1955 she started the Montgomery Bus Boycott by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. Despite of being the first association that comes to mind whenever Rosa Parks is brought up, this event is a single point in a long history of Rosa Parks her life-long career dedicated to civil activism. By the famous gesture on the bus, she implemented a crucial act that encouraged the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott that launched the long and excruciating process of the black Americans fighting for their rights. Prior and following her pivotal role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, she served as a secretary of the NAACP. There, she conducted her investigation of a rape case of a black woman Recy Tailor by six white men and the subsequent investigations of ritualistic rape of black women by white men (McQuire 2011). The contribution that Rosa Parks has made into the history of the black American Civil Rights Movement is impossible to underestimate.
Rosa Parks was arrested and judged at the court for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated Montgomery city bus. Although Rosa was found guilty at the court and subjected to a fine, her arrest led to a one-day boycott of the Montgomery bus net which was the start of an almost a year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott (Carson 1986). After her release from jail, she helped maintain the organization of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. For example, she researched and then gave detailed instructions on the ways to avoid the segregated bus system in order to move across the city (McQuire 2011). A year later after her famous bus ride, in December 1956, the Montgomery transportation system got integrated.
Besides the boycott, Rosa Parks has contributed hugely to the investigation and shedding light to the issue of sexual assault targeted towards black women. She investigated a number of rape cases, such as the rape of Recy Tailor, Joan Little, Betty Jean Owens, to name a few (McQuire 2011). Here, Rosa Parks did not only contribute to the anti-segregation process but also drew attention to intersectional feminist issue, such as a sexualized racial violence.
Different historians attribute the origin of the civil rights movement to different time periods and events. However, most of them agree that Rosa Parks’ famous bus ride plays a special role in the awakening of the movement, as it has launched a chain of crucial events including the Montgomery bus boycott. The impact that Rosa Parks had on the CRM reaches far beyond the success case of integration of the Montgomery bus system. She spent her life fighting against the injustice that was rampant in the American society by contributing into the investigation of police brutality, political prisoners and other forms of racial discrimination. The bus boycott would inspire young Martin Luther King Junior for the consequent chain of events that would change the course of American history and the Civil Rights Movement. It is crucial to understand Rosa Parks’ role in the American history as much more than symbolic. The impact of Rosa Parks spreads across much further than the refusal to give up a bus seat – she fought along with the biggest of the civil rights activists against racial, as well as gender-based discrimination.
References
Carson, Clayborne. 1987. Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years: A Reader and Guide. NY: Penguin Books.
McQuire, Danielle. 2011. At the dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance – a New History of the Civil rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. NY: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.