Stories & Lifestyle: The Mother of Civil Rights – Ms Rosa Parks

About one month ago, the sad news spread of the death of Ms Rosa Parks. Many of you will not have been immediately aware of who the person behind this name was. Rosa Parks' name may not have been that well known here, but her courageous actions led to a virtual rebellion in the US. The story of her life is legendary.

A small gesture with great consequences On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was sitting on the bus home in Montgomery, Alabama, exhausted from work, when a white man demanded that she give up her seat for him. Ms Parks would maybe have given up her seat for a child or an old man. But she was not only tired from work. She was also tired of the absurd laws and regulations of segregation.

For example the so-called Jim-Crow laws that labeled African-Americans and second-rate people. Only white people were allowed to sit in the front of the bus, black citizens had to sit in the back. They had to pay the driver in front, then move to the back. If a white citizen needed a seat, the black citizen had to give his up.

On this day, however, Rosa Parks, seamstress in a department store, active civil rights activist, believing Christian, 42, refused to get up.

In her book "Quiet Strength" she wrote in 1994 that the mistreatments were an injustice and she did not want to accept that anymore. With her action, Parks risked affronting the whites. This had consequences:

She was arrested and presented to a judge, she was supposed to pay a fine. A campaign of solidarity started. For 382 days, the black population boycotted the buses in Montgomery, their leader was the young pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Martin Luther King jr.

Rosa Parks courageous action was the first step leading to the Civil Rights Movement. She still lost her job in Montgomery, as did most activists. Hate calls and hostilities from white citizens caused a nervous breakdown for Rosa Parks' husband Raymond, and they moved to Detroit in 1957, where she started working for a liberal Congressman.

Twenty years later, after her husband's death, she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, that teaches kids about the history of the Civil Rights Movement.