See also: Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks , (February 4th 1913, Tuskegee, Alabama the United States - October 24th 2005, Strait, Michigan), was a black dressmaker who became an emblematic figure of the fight against the racial segregation with the the United States, which was worth to him the nickname of mother of the Mouvement of the civic rights on behalf of the American Congress.

Parks became famous because on February 1st 1955, with Montgomery (Alabama), it refused to yield its place to a white passenger in a bus. Stopped by the police force, she saw herself imposing a fine of 10 dollars (more 4 dollars of court fees) the December 5th; she made call of this judgment. A young person Pasteur black unknown 26 years, Martin Luther King, with the assistance of Ralph Abernathy, then launched a campaign of protest and boycott against the company of bus which lasted 381 days. The November 13rd 1956, the Supreme court broke the segregationist laws in the buses, the informant anticonstitutional.

Youth and first political commitments

Rosa Parks was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, oldest daughter of a family of two children with for James parents and Leona McCauley, respectively carpenter and teacher. In its childhood, it had health issues, including one chronic Angine. After the divorce of her parents, it grew in a farm with her mother, her grandparent Méthodiste S and its Sylvester brother. Very attached so that his/her daughter accepted a good education in spite of the obstacles with the schooling of the Blacks, his/her Leona mother educated Rosa at the house until her eleven years, then it was sent to the Industrial School for Girls , rested by white families of North for the Noirs children, with Montgomery where his/her aunt lived. Then, Rosa began its secondary studies with the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes but it could not follow them until their term, because it had to deal with her large mother then of its mother, which fell sick.

She remembers that his/her large father assembled the guard the night in front of the farm against the actions of the Ku Klux Klan. Its youth quickly makes him undergo the affronts of the Racisme. The KKK burned besides twice the school which she attended, the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls . Although Rosa Parks told in her autobiography not to have had a bad impression of the White, she told details of racism to the daily newspaper (so sharp in the South of the United States) which marked it, such these public fountains reserved for the White or the Blacks (" Child, I thought that the water of the fountains for the White had better taste than that of the Blacks ").

The buses were an good example of this segregation to the daily newspaper. There were certainly no different buses or trains, but of the sections reserved for the White and the Blacks. Rosa Parks remembered however that school transport was prohibited to the yellow and black children. To go to school of Prick Level, the white children travelled by the bus whereas the others went there to foot: “ I saw passing drank each day. But for me, it was like that. We had of another choice to only accept what was our daily newspaper, a very cruel daily newspaper. The bus was one of the first elements by which I realized that there were a world for the Blacks and a world for the White .”

In 1932, it Marie with Raymond Parks, a barber activist of the cause of the Civic right , member of NAACP. It collected also money to support a group of young Blacks, the " Scottboro Boys" , which was wrongfully shown rapes on two white women. He encourages it to finish his secondary studies, which it completes in spite of the family loads in 1934, at one time when only 7% of the Blacks obtain this level of study. In 1940, the Parks husbands become members of the league of the voters ( Voters' League ).

Rosa worked as a dressmaker of 1930 with 1955, but it had also various other trades such as nurse's aide. In December 1943, Parks becomes member of the movement for the civic rights ( American Civil Rights Movement ) and works as a secretary with Montgomery for the section of Alabama of association for the advance of the coloured persons ( National Association for the Advancement off Colored People , NAACP), chaired by Edgar Nixon. On its role in association, she declared: " I was the only woman over there, and they needed a secretary, and I was too timid to say not ". She held this function until in 1957 when she leaves the town of Montgomery. At the beginning of 1945, it briefly held an employment with the air base of Maxwell, a federal zone where the segregation was not in force: " One can say that situation with Maxwell opened the eyes " to me;. She was also cleaning lady for a liberal couple, Clifford and Virginia Durr, who sympathized with her and encouraged it to follow a formation on the rights of the workers and the racial equality in Highlander Folk School, in Monteagle (Tennessee), six months before its arrest.

As much of other Blacks, it was shocked by the wild murder of Emmett Till in August 1955. November 27th according to (that is to say four days before she refuses her seat), she attended a great meeting on her case with Montgomery, whose principal speaker was T.R.M. Howard, an activist of the civic rights of the Mississippi, with the head of the Regional Council off Negro Leadership .

Boycott of the buses of Montgomery

Precursory events

See also: Plessy v. Ferguson

In 1944, the player of baseball Jackie Robinson had to face a case similar when confronted with an officer of the Army with Fort Hood to the Texas, it refused its to direct towards the back of the bus. Robinson was translated in front of a martial Cour, which discharged it. The NAACP dealt with of other cases, like that of Irene Morgan ten years earlier, which was victorious in front of the Supreme court on commercial aspects. However, this victory, did not make null and void the segregative laws only in measurement where they applied to the inter-official trade, like the lines of bus between various States. Black activists had started to prepare defense against the arrest of a 15 year old girl, Claudette Colvin, high-school girl in Booker T. Washington High School de Montgomery. The March 2nd 1955, Colvin was handcuffed, stopped and expelled manu militari of a public bus after she had refused to yield her seat to a white man. She protested that its constitutional laws had been violated. Colvin was then an active member of the group of youth of the NAACP, for which Rosa Parks was an adviser.

Colvin remembers, " Mrs. Parks said, “Made what is right. ” " Rosa Parks raised funds for defense of Colvin, but when E.D. Nixon learned that it was pregnant, he was judged that she was not a suitable symbol for their cause. Shortly after its arrest, it fell pregnant from an older married man; this moral transgression scandalized the pious black community deeply. Its strategists thought that the white segregationist press would put forward the pregnancy of Colvin to discredit any boycott. The NAACP also studied but rejected other cases former to that of Rosa Parks, judged insufficient to face the pressures of contradictory in a legal confrontation with the segregationist laws. Colvin was also known for its verbal skids. The majority of the loads against it were abandoned. The strategists of the NAACP continued to seek a plaintiff beyond any reproach.

In the same way, another woman, Mary Louise Smith, had not been defended, the rumor wanting that his/her father was alcoholic. On the contrary, Rosa Parks was one of the women most distinguished from the city, from which education did not suffer any remark, and thus a better standard for the black cause.

The boycott with Montgomery

Rosa Parks became famous when, on February 1st 1955 in the town of Montgomery, it refused to obey the driver of bus James Blake which requires of him to leave its place to a White and to go to sit down at the bottom of the bus.

In the buses of Montgomery, the first four ranks were reserved for the White. The Blacks, which accounted for 75% of the users, were appointed with the back of the bus. They could nevertheless sit down in the central zone, until White have need; they were then either to yield their place and to go towards the bottom, or to leave the bus. Roof of humiliation: if these places were occupied, the Blacks were to buy their ticket with front well, but were to arise before returning again by the backdoor of the bus to join the sites which were intended to them. Mrs. Parks was the first nobody to violate this payment and other people had paid it hard, sometimes of their life.

During years, the black community complained about the situation and Mrs. Parks did not make exception: " My resistance to these ill treatments in the bus did not start with this arrest. I did much walking in Montgomery." Parks made a public experiment of it one day rainy of 1943 when the bus driver James Blake, asked him to get out of the bus and to return there again by the backdoor. Whereas it moved towards the front door, it dropped its porte-monnaie; she sat down one moment on a seat reserved to the white passengers to recover it. Furious, the bus driver left him hardly time to get out of the bus, which it accelerated. Rosa Parks walked more than five miles under the rain. Irony of fate, it was already by the same driver as on December 1st, 1955.

This day of 1955, it did not have seems it not planned its gesture, but once decided, it assumed it completely. It was stopped, considered and accused of public disorder as well as violation of the local laws. She united the lawyer Edgar Nixon, member of the chapter of Montgomery of the NAACP. Although furious of the reserved treatment with Mrs. Parks, he saw however continuation the interest symbolic system of the combat to carry out. He called a white lawyer, Clifford Durr, which agreed to dispute the law on the segregation whose Rosa Parks was the victim.

The following night, fifty leaders of the community Afro-American, taken along by a young person Pasteur little known at the time Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, met in the church Baptist of the " Dexter Avenue" to discuss the actions to carry out following the arrest of Rosa Parks. They found the " there; Montgomery Improvement Association" , they elect King as president. He will popularize there the theories of the Non-violence and the civil Désobéissance. The movement has three immediate claims:

1. That the White and the Blacks can sit down where they want in the bus.
2. That the drivers are more courteous with regard to all the people.
3. That black drivers are committed.

The lawsuit day before, 35.000 leaflets are distributed to invite the Blacks not to borrow the buses more Monday December 5th. The watchword was taken again Monday by The Montgomery Advertiser , the local black newspaper. The watchword was renewed after a meeting with the church. It is the beginning of the boycott of the buses of Montgomery; it will be prolonged 381 days. Dozen public buses remained with the deposit during months until the law on the segregation in the public buses was raised. The majority went to foot; taxis driven by Blacks made ways with the tariff of the bus (10 hundreds). Some White joined them, sometimes by ideology, sometimes simply because they required that their black employees come to work. Little by little, grace partly to the international echo that the movement had, of the funds started to arrive, making it possible to set up a service of parallel bus, or more modestly the purchase of pairs of shoes. Violent acts were perpetrated, including the dynamiting of the residences of Martin Luther King and the lawyer Edgar Nixon, and of many vexations were listed against the Blacks. Faithful to its strategy, King requires not to answer these acts. This movement caused many of other protests against the segregation led to the United States.

Through her initiating role of the Boycott, Rosa Parks helped with the awakening of the Americans in the fight for the civic rights. King written in its book published in 1958, Stride Toward Freedom , " the arrest of Mrs. Parks was the element release rather than the cause of the protests. …. "

Finally, the November 13rd 1956, the Supreme court of the United States ruled by the stop Browdler v. Gayle that the segregation in the buses was anticonstitutional. The news came from in Montgomery only the November 20th. The boycott ceased the following day.

However, violence continued with shootings against the buses and the residence of Luther King and the explosions aiming at the churches attended by the Blacks. And if the segregation had been abolished in the buses of the state, it was not yet the case for the inter-official connections. A group of young people founded the " Freedom Ride" , but after a few days, one of these buses is stopped by the KKK; its occupants are beaten and the bus flaring. It is only into 1964 that the segregationist laws Jim Crow are repealed by the " Civil Rights Act " who prohibits any form of segregation in the public places, then in 1965 by the " Voting Rights Act " who removes the tests and the taxes to become voter.

Its work for the civic rights

Thereafter, Rosa Parks becomes an icon for the Mouvement of the civic rights. Not finding work with Montgomery and under the pressure of its anxious close relations for his safety, but also because of some dissensions with the Black leaders of the city, it went in 1957 in North, with Hampton in Virginia then with Detroit in the Michigan.

She worked there as a dressmaker, until she unites with the team of the democratic representative of the Michigan, the Afro-American John Conyers with the Chambre of the Representatives of the United States for which she worked of 1965, until its retirement the September 30th 1988.

This combat against the Discrimination S emerged in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act, law which prohibits any form of discrimination in the public places and in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act which removed the tests and other taxes to become voter in the United States.

The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development is founded in February 1987 jointly by Rosa Parks and Elaine Eason Steele in the honor of the husband of Rosa, Raymond Parks (deceased in 1977). The institute organizes visits of drunk for the young generations in their showing the important sites of the movement for the civic rights. At the time of a visit in 1997, the bus fell into a river and killed Adisa Foluke, that everyone regarded as his/her small adoptive son, and wounded many others of it.

In October 1995, it had taken part in the " Million Man March " , which gathered more than one million Blacks to Washington.

Its last years were difficult. She was in particular hospitalized after a made holdup August 30th 1994 by an young man 28 years, Joseph Skipper, who stole 53 dollars to him. He was condemned the August 8th 1995 to 15 years of prison. Rosa Parks forgave him partially, since she wished that he be able to repurchase himself and not go in prison. It had at the end of its days of the difficulties of paying its rent and had to make call using its Church, so that its owner stops the legal proceedings.

Death and funeral

Rosa Parks resided at Detroit until her death the October 24th 2005. Since 2004, it suffered from degenerative Démence.

After its death, the political community as a whole paid homage to him. The president George W. Bush honoured his memory in a short televised speech and its skin remained exposed two days in the rotunda of the Capitole for a public homage. Privilege reserved usually to the politicians and to the soldiers, Rosa Parks is the 31e nobody after old the President Ronald Reagan in June 2004 and the first woman to receive this honor. She is also the second black personality (the first was Jacob J. Chestnut) and the second nobody not forming part of the government (the first was French Pierre the Child in 1909) to receive such a homage on behalf of the federal government.

Thousands of people witnessed its funeral in the church Greater Grace Temple to Detroit the November 2nd. An estimate gives a report on: 60000 American to have paid to him homage in the first days which followed its burial in its native State of the Alabama and in Washington. Many personalities assisted to with it, the former president Bill Clinton, the sénatrice of New York Hillary Clinton, the black Pasteur Jesse Jackson, of the black elected officials of the Congress, the leaders of the Mouvement of the civic rights and other dignitaries. The Chanteuse Aretha Franklin also sang for the occasion. The US president had also issued that all the flags are put in Bern the day of its burial. The hearse itself was followed of a bus of the years 1950 covered with a black shroud.

Following its death, the bus in which was held the arrest of Rosa Parks was draped of a red and black shroud until official funerals. Lastly, the first places of the buses of Montgomery remained vacant until the day of its burial. They were covered with a photograph of Rosa Parks surrounded by a black ribbon carrying the following inscription: “The company of bus RTA pays homage to the woman who was held upright while remaining sat. ”

Complements

Homages

• sitted It so that we can rise. (...) Paradoxically, its imprisonment opened the doors of our long walk towards freedom. Reverend Jesse Jackson, on October 25th, 2005.

• It was often described by the media as a simple kind of woman who would have returned in the history a little by chance. It is not true. It was a very courageous woman who consciously risked her life and the prison to break the system of apartheid . Jesse Jackson, on October 25th, 2005.

• There are very few people who can say that their actions and their control changed the face of the nation, and Rosa Parks is one of these individuals. the representative John Conyers.

• If I am here, it is only thanks to it. Kwame Kilpatrick, black mayor of Strait, paying homage to Rosa Parks, the October 25th 2005.

• It was a pionnière of the civil laws who inspired to a whole generation people to fight for their freedom . Condoleeza Rice, first black woman Secretary of State, originating in Alabama.

• an authentic American heroin It very humble and was very measured in its words. But with-inside itself, it had a savage determination By its courage and its example, it provided the foundations which made it possible the country to live in agreement with its convictions . The democrat Barack Obama, only senator Noir.

• the courage of Rosa Parks testifies that each one among us with the capacity to contribute to build a better world and just. This woman will remain, for all the antiracists, an good example of simplicity, tenacity and fraternity. S.O.S Racism, on October 25th, 2005.

• Rosa Parks was a heroin, not only with the eyes of the minority communities of the American South and women, but of very whole humanity. Paul Martin, Prime Minister for the Canada.

• Rosa Parks proved in the world that an direct action, and non-violent with a precise goal can bear fruit and change the course of the history Its engagement, its courage and its fight for the civic rights, and against racism are examples for all the activists of the whole world. the German green party.

• I believe firmly that God places various people at various periods of the history so that large things occur, I believe that Rosa Parks is one of these personnes". Bob Riley, governor of Alabama.

• Camphouse Mark, type-setter, wrote the part has Movement for Rosa in the homage of Rosa Parks.

• the 4/2/2005, Blacks d' Occase, groups local Narbonnese, creates on scene a song homage to Rosa Parks (The Story off a Simple Person), at the time of the day " Respect" total; organized by association " Neither Whores Nor Soumises" in Gruissan. (The song is visible with the page http://lesartsbleus.chez-alice.fr/blackdoextraitstextes.htm) (images in this concert are visible with the page http://lesartsbleus.chez-alice.fr/phornp.htm)

• In 2006, the French singer Pascal Obispo dedicated a song Rosa to him, in its album the Flowers of the good .

Honors for Rosa Parks

In 1979, the NAACP decorated it with the Spingarn medal , its higher distinction, and it accepted the following year the Martin Luther King Sr. Award . It was named in Michigan' S Women Hall off Famed in 1983 for its action in favor of the civic rights. In 1990, the " Center Kennedy" from Washington, at the time of its sixty-ten-seventh birthday a price decreed to him. It accepted the Prix of Peace Rosa Parks in 1994 with Stockholm in Sweden, then the presidential Médaille of freedom , the highest distinction decreed by the American executive in 1996, of the hands of Bill Clinton.

In 1998, it became the first member elect of the Freedom Conductor Award decreed by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center . The following year, it accepted the Gold medal of the Congress ( Congressional Gold Medal ), the highest distinction decreed by the American legislative body, then the International Strait-Windsor Freedom Festival Freedom Award . In September 1999, it received the honors of the " Alabama Academy off Honor" , an organization which rewards the citizens deserving for Alabama.

In 1999, the magazine '' Time '' named Rosa Parks one of the twenty more important figures of the 20th century. In 2000, its State native gave off to him the Alabama Academy Honor as well as the first Governor' S Medal off Honor for Extraordinary Courage . In December of the same year, Troy State University de Montgomery gave its name to a museum and a library. A street and a school bear also its name to Detroit. It also received rewards of doctor honoris causa of two dozen universities all over the world and was made honorary member of the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha .

In 1992, it published a book for children, Rosa Parks: My Story , a chronology explaining its life until the day when she refused to yield her seat. This book was followed by its memories Quiet Strength . The Library and museum Rosa Parks ( Rosa Parks Library and Museum ) with Montgomery, were inaugurated in November 2001. The most popular object of the museum is a sculpture of Rosa Parks sitting on the bench of a bus. Documentary the " Mighty Times: The Legacy off Rosa Parks" in 2002 with the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject was nominated. This year there, she also collaborated in a telefilm telling her life, her role being played by Angela Bassett.

In September 2006, a Rosa Parks College with open her doors to Neuville on the Saone (the Rhone).

In 2006, the French singer Pascal Obispo paid homage to Rosa Parks in his Rosa song. At the time of its round 2007, " Rosa" is very a great moment full with emotions during the concert. The clip, at the time of the concert and illustrating this song, is splendid and full with direction.

May 10th, 2007, Pascal Beaudet, mayor of Aubervilliers, inaugurates the Rosa-Parks place, on the esplanade of the market of the downtown area.

Quotations of Rosa Parks

Concerning the Martin Luther King Day , bank holiday celebrating the birthday day of the birth of the black leader, Rosa Parks worried about the loss of flavor of her image and the risk which one does not remember him, which like a dreamer ( dreamer ). She declared: In my memory, it was more than one dreamer. He was an activist in the action, as much as a speaker against oppression .

We must redouble efforts to try to inspire our youth and to incite them to want to study our heritage as with knowing what that means black being in America of today. Quotation of 1988.

" Until now, I believe that we are on the planet Ground to live, us to open out and make our possible to make this world better so that everyone can enjoy the liberté."

References

Random links:

Monfaucon (the Dordogne) | Phyllodactylus transversalis | Rob Blakemore | Water tower of the street Na Grobli de Wrocław | Adson of Montier-in-DER