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Rosa Parks: The First Lady of Civil Rights

Rosa Parks: The First Lady of Civil Rights

Some facts about Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Bowder v Gayle, and Civil Rights.

More Decks by Robin Ranjit Singh Chauhan

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Transcript

  1. Rosa Parks
    The First Lady of Civil Rights
    February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005

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  2. About
    ● Lived in Montgomery, Alabama
    ○ grandparents were former slaves and strong
    advocates for racial equality
    ● Attended segregated school
    ○ Black students had to walk to 1-room school
    ○ White students were bussed to new school building
    ● Married
    ○ Raymond Parks, a barber and an active member of
    the NAACP; no children
    ● NAACP
    ○ Youth leader of National Association for the
    Advancement of Colored People
    ○ Secretary to NAACP president

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  3. Montgomery Buses at the time
    ● First 4 rows for whites; sections marked by
    moveable sign
    ● Driver could move the sign or remove it
    ● “Colored section” for blacks who were 75%
    of ridership
    ● Law at the time: Black people allowed in
    middle seats until white area filled up, then
    black people were to move back or stand
    ● Black people could not sit in same row as
    white people

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  4. Montgomery Buses at the time
    ● If white people were sitting in the front:
    ○ Black people were to board at front to pay, THEN
    ○ Exit bus and re-enter from back door
    ● Others had protested and been arrested for
    breaking these rules before Parks

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  5. "My resisting being
    mistreated on the bus did
    not begin with that
    particular arrest. I did a lot
    of walking in Montgomery."
    - Rosa Parks

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  6. 1943: Parks Bus experience
    ● Parks boarded a bus and paid the fare
    ● moved to her seat, but driver James F. Blake
    told her to follow city rules and enter the bus
    again from the back door.
    ● When Parks exited the vehicle, Blake drove off
    without her
    ● Parks waited for the next bus, determined
    never to ride with Blake again
    ● This was all in the rain

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  7. 1955: Civil Disobedience
    ● She was sitting in middle “colored section”
    ● White-only section filled up
    ● He moved the "colored" section sign behind Parks and demanded that four
    black people give up their seats in the middle section so that the white
    passengers could sit
    ○ Driver: “Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats”
    ● Three others complied
    ● Parks moved, but toward the window seat; she did not get up to move to the
    redesignated colored section

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  8. “When that white driver stepped
    back toward us, when he waved
    his hand and ordered us up and
    out of our seats, I felt a
    determination cover my body
    like a quilt on a winter night”
    - Rosa Parks

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  9. Dialogue
    ● Driver: "Why don't you stand up?"
    ● Parks: "I don't think I should have to stand up."
    ● Driver: “Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the police and
    have you arrested”
    ● Parks: “You may do that.”
    Driver called police

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  10. “I would have to know for once
    and for all what rights I had as a
    human being and a citizen”
    - Rosa Parks

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  11. “People always say that I didn't give up my
    seat because I was tired, but that isn't true.
    I was not tired physically, or no more tired
    than I usually was at the end of a working
    day. I was not old, although some people
    have an image of me as being old then. I was
    forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired
    of giving in”
    - Rosa Parks

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  12. ● Charges
    ○ Disorderly conduct
    ○ Violating local ordinance
    ● Found guilty, Fined $10 + $4 court costs
    ○ $134 in 2019 dollars
    Arrest + Charges

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  13. Boycott
    ● Allies
    ○ Nixon President of the Montgomery NAACP
    ○ College Professor Jo Ann Robinson of Women's Political Council (WPC)
    ● Overnight, Robinson made 35,000 copies of flyer for boycott
    ○ Announced at black churches, front-page article in newspaper
    ● Conditions of boycott
    ○ Black people treated with the level of courtesy they expected
    ○ black drivers hired
    ○ seating in the middle of the bus was handled on a first-come basis

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  15. This is for Monday, December 5, 1955
    Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of
    her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down.
    It is the second time since the Claudette Colbert case that a Negro women has been arrested for
    the same thing This has to be stopped.
    Negroes have rights, too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate.
    Three-fourths of the riders are Negroes, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty
    seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it
    may be you, or your daughter, or mother.
    This woman's case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the
    busses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don't ride the busses to work, to town, to school, or
    anywhere on Monday.
    You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus.
    You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please,
    children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off of all buses Monday.

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  16. The Montgomery Bus Boycott
    ● Decided to form new
    organization to lead boycott
    ○ Reverend suggested “Montgomery
    Improvement Association”
    ○ Members elected Martin Luther King
    Jr. as president, at that time mostly
    unknown
    ● Transport
    ○ Carpools
    ○ Black-operated cabs with same fare
    as bus
    ○ Rest walked upto 30km

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  17. The Montgomery Bus Boycott
    ● 381 days
    ● City busses mostly empty
    ○ Crippling finances for its transit
    company
    ● Violence by segregationists
    ○ Black churches burned
    ○ Homes of King and Nixon were
    bombed
    ● Insurance for city taxi system
    used by Blacks was cancelled
    ● Black people arrested for
    violating “antiquated law
    prohibiting boycotts”

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  18. ● Armed with the Brown v. Board of Education
    decision
    ○ separate but equal policies had no place in public education
    ● District court
    ○ June 1956, the declared racial segregation "Jim Crow" laws
    unconstitutional
    ○ City of Montgomery appealed
    ● U.S. Supreme Court
    ○ November 13, 1956 upheld the lower court's ruling, declaring
    segregation on public transport to be unconstitutional
    ● City of Montgomery lifted segregation
    ○ Boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956
    Legal Action: Bowder v Gayle

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  19. “We hold that the statutes and ordinances
    requiring segregation of the white and colored
    races on the motor buses of a common carrier of
    passengers in the City of Montgomery and its
    police jurisdiction violate the due process and
    equal protection of the law clauses of the
    Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
    United States”
    -- Supreme Court, Bowder v Gayle
    https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/browder-v-gayle-1956/
    Legal Action

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  20. ● Unanimous ruling that racial segregation of children
    in public schools was unconstitutional
    ● established precedent that “separate-but-equal”
    education and other services were not, in fact,
    equal at all
    1954: Brown v. Board of Education

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  21. ● granted citizenship to "all persons born or
    naturalized in the United States."
    ● included former slaves recently freed
    ● forbids states from
    ○ denying any person "life, liberty or property, without due
    process of law"
    ○ or to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
    protection of the laws
    1868: 14th Amemdment

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  23. ● Fired from her job as a seamstress in a
    local department store
    ○ Husband could not find work
    ○ Death threats for years
    ○ Couple moved to Detroit with her mother
    ● Subsequently
    ○ For over 20 years, secretary and receptionist to
    African-American US Representative John
    Conyers
    ○ Active in black rights movement
    After boycott

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  24. Recognition
    ● NAACP's 1979 Spingarn Medal
    ● Presidential Medal of Freedom
    ● Congressional Gold Medal
    ● posthumous statue in the United
    States Capitol's National Statuary
    Hall
    ● first woman to lie in honor in the
    Capitol Rotunda
    ● Rosa Parks Day
    ○ California + Missouri: her birthday
    February 4
    ○ Ohio and Oregon : anniversary of the
    day she was arrested, December 1.

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  25. Popular Culture
    Rosa Parks Barbie doll “Inspiring women” series

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  27. "Refusing to give up a seat on a
    segregated bus was the simplest
    of gestures, but her grace,
    dignity, and refusal to tolerate
    injustice helped spark a Civil
    Rights Movement that spread
    across America."
    - Former President Barack
    Obama

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  28. References
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks
    https://www.crmvet.org/docs/mbbleaf.htm
    https://www.loc.gov/collections/rosa-parks-papers/about-this-collection/
    https://www.biography.com/activist/rosa-parks
    https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/browder-v-gayle-1956/
    https://www.npr.org/2015/11/30/457533368/in-montgomery-rosa-parks-story-offers
    -a-history-lesson-for-police

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  29. Rosa Parks
    The First Lady of Civil Rights
    February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005

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