5 CHAPTER ONE This booking photo shows Rosa Parks after her arrest on December 1 1955 It was the end of a workday on December 1 1955 a regular day for seamstress Rosa Parks This African-American woman and local civil rights activist was on her way home during rush hour in Montgomery Alabama She rode the bus and that meant following the city’s bus segregation laws At that time the South was segregated drinking fountains public bathrooms restaurants waiting TIME FOR CHANGE
CIVIL RIGHTS VOICES Rosa Parks When I made that decision I knew I had the strength of my ancestors with me A pioneer in the civil rights movement Rosa Parks was born in 1913 in Tuskegee Alabama She became an activist in Montgomery in the 1940s Her actions sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott After the boycott Parks moved to Detroit Michigan She continued to work for civil rights She died in Detroit in 2005 at the age of 92 6 rooms trains and much more State laws prevented African Americans and whites from mixing The laws limited the rights of African Americans They were treated as second-class citizens by whites In Montgomery the first ten seats of a bus were reserved for white passengers Other states had laws about bus segregation too including Arkansas Florida Georgia Louisiana Mississippi Oklahoma Tennessee and Texas African Americans had to sit at the back of the bus and could not enter through the front door On December 1 Parks
Rosa Parks Segregated Bus Seating This diagram shows where Parks sat in the bus when she was arrested in 1955 How does seeing this seating diagram help you understand the description of Parks’s protest Does it help you understand how African Americans may have felt obeying the segregation laws at the time bought her ticket boarded through the back door and sat just behind the white section After three stops more white people boarded the bus The white section filled up and one white man had no place to sit Bus drivers had a lot of power and carried guns The bus driver that day was 7
