1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African woman who worked as a seamstress, boarded this Montgomery City bus to go home from work. American Black residents of Montgomery often avoided urban buses if possible because they found the Negroes-in-back policy so degrading.When a white man entered the bus, and there were not any more seats the bus driver asked four blacks in the first of several rows to stand three complied. Mrs. Parks, who was an active member of the local NAACP. refused to give up her seat. …show more content…
Parks, her husband, and mother moved to Detroit where her little brother lived. She became the administrator aid in the Detroit office of congressman John Conyers Jr. During the years of 1977 and 1979 Rosa Parks lost her mother, husband, and brother to cancer. She ended up retiring in 1988 in which she began to travel to lend her support, knowledge and experience to other civil rights activists a well as the youth in many different communities. In 1999, Parks was awarded the congressional gold medal, which is the highest honor the United States bestows on a civilian.
Rosa Parks died at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005. She became the first woman in the nation's history to lie in the state at the U.S Capitol. In the South, cities were lightning rods for civil rights activists. It took someone with the courage and character of Rosa Parks to strike with lightning. And it required the commitment of the entire African American community to fan the flames behind her actions to learn to be supportive and fight for what's right in the human eye. Today we are able to ride the bus and sit where ever we choose to thanks to the acts of Rosa Parks. Our generation couldn't be more grateful for the paths that have been paved for