Standing Alone but Moving a Nation: Rosa Parks

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“Stand up for what you believe in even if it means standing alone”-Unknown. . Rosa Parks believed strongly in the equal treatment of everyone no matter their race. She is the perfect example of this quote she stood up (sat down) all alone in that bus seat without anybody defending her until after it happened. In the novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird” the characters Scout, Atticus, and Tom Robinson all stood up for something they believed in despite the fact that they were standing alone.

Rosa Parks born and raised in Alabama was sitting alone on a Montgomery city bus. The bus driver noticed a white man standing up and asked Parks to move so he could sit down and have her seat forcing her to stand up. When she refused to move he called the police and she was arrested. She didn’t know what would happen, if her friends would look at her differently, how long she would stay in jail, all she knew was ,”It was time for someone to stand up--or in my case, sit down. I refused to move." (Parks, Rosa). She had also said that, “For half of my life there were laws and customs in the South that kept African-Americans segregated from Caucasians and allowed white people to treat black people without any respect. I never thought this was fair, and from the time I was a child, I tried to protest against disrespectful treatment. But it was very hard to do anything about segregation and racism when white people had the power of the law behind them.” (The St. Petersburg Times)

On December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks fought for equal rights by refusing to give up her seat and was arrested. On December 5, 1955 Rosa Parks faced the court for her actions and on that same day the Montgomery Bus Boycott began. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a form of protest tow...

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"Montgomery Bus Boycott." Violence in America. Ed. Ronald Gottesman and Richard

Maxwell Brown. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999. U.S. History in Context.

Web. 1 May 2014.

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