Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parkswas an African American civil rights activist, whom the United States Congress called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". Her birthday, February 4, and the day she was arrested, December 1, have both become Rosa Parks Day, commemorated in California and Missouri, and Ohio and Oregon...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth4 February 1913
CityTuskegee, AL
CountryUnited States of America
I was ready to die but give my consent never. Never, never.
People have said over the years that the reason I did not give up my seat was because I was tired. I did not think of being physically tired. My feet were not hurting. I was tired in a different way. I was tired of seeing so many men treated as boys and not called by their proper names or titles. I was tired of seeing children and women mistreated and disrespected because of the color of their skin. I was tired of Jim Crow laws, of legally enforced racial segregation.
People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving up.
It was just a matter of survival...of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl and hearing the Ku Klux Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down.
It was not pre-arranged. It just happened that the driver made and demand and I just didn't feel like obeying his demand . . . I was quite tired after spending a full day working.
It's very sad, very sad, ... He was just as close to me as if he was my own grandson, and I felt that way about him, and that's how he felt about me.
At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this, ... It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in.
The time had just come when I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed, I suppose. I had decided that I would have to know, once and for all, what rights I had as a human being and a citizen, even in Montgomery, Alabama.
so that the citizens of the United States may pay their last respects to this great American.
I didn't want to. I didn't think I should have to. I didn't feel that it was the right thing for us to be enduring.
she stood up by sitting down. I'm only standing here because of her.
When they stood up and I stayed where I was, he asked me if I was going to stand and I told him that 'no, I wasn't,' and he told me if I did not stand up he was going to have me arrested. And, I told him to go on and have me arrested,
You treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene -- just a very special person,