This Saturday is the 57th anniversary of the day that Rosa Parks refused to obey an order to give up her bus seat to a white passenger and, in so doing, became a defining icon of the Civil Rights Movement.GoLocalProv | News | Aaron Regunberg: The Real Story of Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was far from a “poor old seamstress.” In fact, Parks was a vibrant, strong woman who had long been an important community leader in the fight for racial justice. Parks had been one of the first women in Montgomery to join the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and had been its secretary for many years, working under chapter president E.D. Nixon, a major union leader from whom she learned about the labor movement. Rosa Parks was well known to local African American leaders for her moral strength and her work fighting to desegregate Montgomery schools, and was well versed in former challenges to segregation, such as a bus boycott in Baton Rouge two years earlier that had won limited gains, and the three black residents of Montgomery who had been arrested previously for refusing to move to the back of the bus (Rosa Parks was far from the first African American to do this
Rosa Parks was far from a “poor old seamstress.” In fact, Parks was a vibrant, strong woman who had long been an important community leader in the fight for racial justice. Parks had been one of the first women in Montgomery to join the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and had been its secretary for many years, working under chapter president E.D. Nixon, a major union leader from whom she learned about the labor movement. Rosa Parks was well known to local African American leaders for her moral strength and her work fighting to desegregate Montgomery schools, and was well versed in former challenges to segregation, such as a bus boycott in Baton Rouge two years earlier that had won limited gains, and the three black residents of Montgomery who had been arrested previously for refusing to move to the back of the bus (Rosa Parks was far from the first African American to do this
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