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
if she could not survive as humble and as sweet as she was in a segregated society ? nobody could survive.
If you want to be respected for your actions, then your behavior must be above reproach. If our lives demonstrate that we are peaceful, humble, and trusted, this is recognized by others.
We've got an urban area with very few middle-class citizens in it, ... I don't think anything could bring me back.
I was just trying to let them know how I felt about being treated as a human being,
I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... and other people would be also free.
People are exploiting it, ... We are very concerned about that.
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.
You treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene -- just a very special person,
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.
the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long.