Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parkswas an African American civil rights activist, whom the United States Congress called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". Her birthday, February 4, and the day she was arrested, December 1, have both become Rosa Parks Day, commemorated in California and Missouri, and Ohio and Oregon...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth4 February 1913
CityTuskegee, AL
CountryUnited States of America
I heard that she sat down on the bus. That is all that I know. They don't tell you too much about this stuff at school. They talk mostly about military tactics and how wars were won.
Her act of civil disobedience, for which she was willing to pay the price to end the rein of terror, got her arrested.
He pointed at me and said, 'that one won't stand up.' The two policemen came near me and only one spoke to me. He asked me if the driver had asked me to stand up? I said, 'yes.' He asked me why I didn't stand up, ... I told him I didn't think I should have to stand up. So I asked him: 'Why do you push us around?' And he told me, 'I don't know, but the law is the law and you are under arrest.'
You treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene -- just a very special person,
It was just a matter of survival...of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl and hearing the Ku Klux Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down.
It was not pre-arranged. It just happened that the driver made and demand and I just didn't feel like obeying his demand . . . I was quite tired after spending a full day working.
It's very sad, very sad, ... He was just as close to me as if he was my own grandson, and I felt that way about him, and that's how he felt about me.
All I was doing was trying to get home from work.
My only concern was to get home after a hard day's work.
Arrest me for sitting on a bus? You may do that.
I see the energy of young people as a real force for positive change.
There is no future without education.
I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth that I hold deeply inside. I will no longer act as if I were less than the whole person I know myself inwardly to be.
All I was trying to do was get home from work.