Rosa Parks’ contribution on the development of civil rights in the USA.

PRESENTATION  :

Rosa Parks’ contribution on the development of civil rights in the USA.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT ( INTRODUCTION )

Slavery in the United States was the legal institution, primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed from its founding in 1776 until passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. After the United States abolished slavery, black Americans continued to be marginalized through enforced segregated and diminished access to facilities, housing, education and opportunities.

Segregation soon became official policy enforced by a series of Southern laws. Through so-called Jim Crow laws, legislators segregated everything from schools to residential areas to public parks to theaters to pools to cemeteries, jails and even phone booths.

It was in such conditions that famous American public figure, political activist and one of the founders of the civil rights movement for black people in the US, Rosa Parks was born and lived.

But how could this brave woman influence the state and social system of the US ? How has she contributed to improving life for this minority at that time, and how has its action influenced the current plight of black people in the United States?

DÉVELOPPEMENT

I) Standing up for her rights

A) Biography

Raza Parks was born in 1913 in Alabama, and grew up with her mother and her grands parents. Since childhood, she dreamed of becoming a teacher, but due to her mother's illness, she had to leave school in order to take care of her.

She also faced discrimination and racial segregation from an early age: In Alabama, as in the southern state, the Kuklus Klan movements were prevalent at that time, and she also had to walk to school for exemple while white children could  ride buses.

At 19, she married Raymond Parks, a human rights activist. It was her husband, who supported her throughout her whole life and also pushed her to become a member of NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1932.

She worked as a secretary for this organization until 1956, and it was this organization that pushed her to do the act that changed her life and even situation in the whole country.

B) Montgomery Bus Boycott

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, the 42-year-old Rosa Parks was commuting home from a long day of work at the Montgomery Fair department store by bus. Segregation was written into law; the front of a Montgomery bus was reserved for white citizens, and the seats behind them for black citizens. ( two sections for black and white people ). However, it was only by custom that bus drivers had the authority to ask a black person to give up a seat for a white rider.

Nonetheless, at one point on the route, a white man had no seat because all the seats in the designated “white” section were taken. So the driver told the riders in the four seats of the first row of the “colored” section to stand, in effect adding another row to the “white” section. The three others obeyed. Parks did not. So the driver had to call the police and so Rosa Parks was arrested.

The President of NAACP, Nixon was there when Parks was released on bail later that evening. Nixon had hoped for years to find a courageous black person of unquestioned honesty and integrity to become the plaintiff in a case that might become the test of the validity of segregation laws. He convinced Parks that she was plaintiff.

Another idea arose as well: The blacks of Montgomery would boycott the buses on the day of Parks’ trial, Monday, December 5. By midnight, 35,000 flyers were being mimeographed to be sent home with black schoolchildren, informing their parents of the planned boycott. Nixon and some ministers decided to take advantage of the momentum, forming the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to manage the boycott, and they elected Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the MIA’s president.

II) Civil Rights Leader

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