SEGREGATION AND OPPRESSION December 1 1955 had been a long day for Rosa Parks She worked as a seamstress sewing clothes in Montgomery Alabama She was tired and eager to get home Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus It was more crowded than normal that day Most of the seats for black people were taken She found a seat in the row right behind the seats for white people only and sat down After a few more stops there were no more seats left in the white part of the bus Black people started to make room for Rosa Parks in dark coat boarded the bus like she did most other days
white riders But one white man was left standing That’s when the bus driver James F Blake looked back He told Parks and three other black people sitting near her to give up their seats African Americans were expected to stand so that white people could sit The others rose They moved to the back of the bus Most days Parks agreed to move too But she’d had enough of giving in to unfair segregation laws She remained seated Blake asked Parks if she was planning to stand up She simply said No He said he would have Parks arrested She replied You may do that Blake left the bus and came back with two police officers They hauled Parks off to City Hall She was fingerprinted photographed and charged Then she was placed in a prison cell Parks took a stand by staying seated on that bus That small act changed the course of her life and the lives of many others forever She showed people that it wasn’t okay to treat black people differently People across the city and even the entire country took
notice Parks quickly became one of the best-known faces of the American civil rights movement History of Inequality The American civil rights movement took place from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s African Americans did not have the same civil rights and freedoms as white people In the southern states oppression and segregation were common since the American Civil War 1861 1865 and the end of slavery Over time black people began to take action They hoped to gain fair and equal treatment for all people In the 1930s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP FOR CIVIL RIGHTS The NAACP is a civil rights group that formed in 1909 in Springfield Illinois It tries to make the world a fair and equal place for all people no matter their race The NAACP holds events to help spread the word about why civil rights matter Today the NAACP has more than 500,000 members around the world
