Rosa parks autobiography for kids pdf

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Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Texts Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Politically liberalthe Durrs became her friends. They encouraged—and eventually helped sponsor—Parks in the summer of to attend the Highlander Folk Schoolan education center for activism in workers' rights and racial equality in Monteagle, Tennessee.

There Parks was mentored by the veteran organizer Septima Clark. In Augustblack teenager Emmett Till was brutally murdered after reportedly flirting with a young white woman while visiting relatives in Mississippi. Lee and Lamar Smith. The featured speaker was T. Howarda black civil rights leader from Mississippi who headed the Regional Council of Negro Leadership.

Parks was deeply saddened and angry at the news, particularly because Till's case had garnered much more attention than any of the cases she and the Montgomery NAACP had worked on—and yet, the two men still walked free. InMontgomery had passed a city ordinance to segregate bus passengers by race. Conductors were empowered to assign seats to achieve that goal.

According to the law, no passenger would be required to move or give up their seat and stand if the bus was crowded and no other seats were available. Over time and by custom, however, Montgomery bus drivers adopted the practice of requiring black riders to move when there were no white-only seats left. The first four rows of seats on each Montgomery bus were reserved for whites.

The sections were not fixed but were determined by placement of a movable sign. Black people could sit in the middle rows until the white section filled. If more whites needed seats, blacks were to move to seats in the rear, stand, or, if there was no room, leave the bus. Black people could not sit across the aisle in the same row as white people.

The driver could move the "colored" section sign, or remove it altogether. If white people were already sitting in the front, black people had to board at the front to pay the fare, then disembark and reenter through the rear door. For years, the black community had complained that the situation was unfair. Parks said, "My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest.

I did a lot of walking in Montgomery. One day inParks boarded a bus and paid the fare. She then moved to a seat, but driver James F. Blake told her to follow city rules and enter the bus again from the back door. When Parks exited the vehicle, Blake drove off without her. She paid her fare and sat in an empty seat in the first row of back seats reserved for blacks in the "colored" section.

Near the middle of the bus, her row was directly behind the ten seats reserved for white passengers. Initially, she did not notice that the bus driver was the same man, James F. Blake, who had left her in the rain in As the bus traveled along its regular route, all of the white-only seats in the bus filled up. The bus reached the third stop in front of the Empire Theater, and several white passengers boarded.

Blake noted that two or three white passengers were standing, as the front of the bus had filled to capacity. The bus driver moved the "colored" section sign behind Parks and demanded that four black people give up their seats in the middle section so that the white passengers could sit. Years later, in recalling the events of the day, Parks said, "When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night.

By Parks's account, Blake said, "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats. Parks said, "The driver wanted us to stand up, the four of us. We didn't move at the beginning, but he says, 'Let me have these seats. Parks moved, but toward the window seat; she did not get up to move to the redesignated colored section. Blake said, "Why don't you stand up?

When recalling the incident for Eyes on the Prizea public television series on the Civil Rights Movement, Parks said, "When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up, and I said, 'No, I'm not. During a radio interview with Sydney Rogers in West Oakland several months after her arrest, Parks said she had decided, "I would have to know for once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen.

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in. When Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her.

As the officer took her away, she recalled that she asked, "Why do you push us around? Parks was charged with a violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, segregation law of the Montgomery City code, [ 48 ] although technically she had not taken a white-only seat; she had been in a colored section. Parks did not originate the idea of protesting segregation with a bus rosa parks autobiography for kids pdf.

Those preceding her included Bayard Rustin in[ 52 ] Irene Morgan inLillie Mae Bradford in[ 53 ] Sarah Louise Keys in[ 54 ] and the members of the ultimately successful Browder v. Robinson believed it important to seize the opportunity and stayed up all night mimeographing over 35, handbills announcing a bus boycott. The Women's Political Council was the first group to officially endorse the boycott.

On Sunday, December 4,plans for the Montgomery bus boycott were announced at black churches in the area, and a front-page article in the Montgomery Advertiser helped spread the word. At a church rally that night, those attending agreed unanimously to continue the boycott until they were treated with the level of courtesy they expected, until black drivers were hired, and until seating in the middle of the bus was handled on a first-come basis.

The next day, Parks was tried on charges of disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. The trial lasted 30 minutes. I did not want to be mistreated, I did not want to be deprived of a seat that I had paid for. It was just time I had plenty to do without having to end up in jail. But when I had to face that decision, I didn't hesitate to do so because I felt that we had endured that too long.

The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became. The handbill read. We are You can afford to stay out of school for one day.

Rosa parks autobiography for kids pdf: Reading: Analyzing social context.

If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off the buses Monday. It rained that day, but the black community persevered in their boycott. Most of the remainder of the 40, black commuters walked, some as far as 20 miles 30 km. That evening after the success of the one-day boycott, a group of 16 to 18 people gathered at the Mt.

At that time, Parks was introduced but not asked to speak, despite a standing ovation and calls from the crowd for her to speak; when she asked if she should say something, the reply was, "Why, you've said enough.

Rosa parks autobiography for kids pdf: In , Rosa Parks wrote an

The group agreed that a new organization was needed to lead the boycott effort if it were to continue. Its members elected as their president Martin Luther King Jr. That Monday night, 50 leaders of the African-American community gathered to discuss actions to respond to Parks's arrest. She was securely married and employed, was regarded as possessing a quiet and dignified demeanor, and was politically savvy.

King said that Parks was regarded as "one of the finest citizens of Montgomery—not one of the finest Negro citizens, but one of the finest citizens of Montgomery". Parks's court case was being slowed down in appeals through the Alabama courts on their way to a Federal appeal and the process could have taken years. In the end, black residents of Montgomery continued the boycott for days.

Dozens of public buses stood idle for months, severely damaging the bus transit company's finances, until the city repealed its law requiring segregation on public buses following the US Supreme Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle that it was unconstitutional. Parks was not included as a plaintiff in the Browder decision because the attorney Fred Gray concluded the courts would perceive they were attempting to circumvent her prosecution on her charges working their way through the Alabama state court system.

Parks played an important part in raising international awareness of the plight of African Americans and the civil rights struggle. King wrote in his book Stride Toward Freedom that Parks's arrest was the catalyst rather than the cause of the protest: "The cause lay deep in the record of similar injustices. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.

After her arrest, Parks became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement but suffered hardships as a result. Due to economic sanctions used against activists, she lost her job at the department store. Her husband lost his job as a barber at Maxwell Air Force Base [ 66 ] after his boss forbade him to talk about his wife or the legal case. She also disagreed with King and other leaders of Montgomery's struggling civil rights movement about how to proceed, and was constantly receiving death threats.

Later that year, at the urging of her brother and sister-in-law in Detroit, Sylvester and Daisy McCauley, Rosa and Raymond Parks and her mother moved north to join them. The City of Detroit attempted to cultivate a progressive rosa parks autobiography for kids pdf, but Parks encountered numerous signs of discrimination against African-Americans.

Schools were effectively segregated, and services in Black neighborhoods substandard. InParks told an interviewer that, "I don't feel a great deal of difference here Housing segregation is just as bad, and it seems more noticeable in the larger cities. Parks rendered crucial assistance in the first campaign for Congress by John Conyers. She persuaded Martin Luther King, who was generally reluctant to endorse local candidates, to appear with Conyers, thereby boosting the novice candidate's profile.

She held this position until she retired in There was only one Rosa Parks. She visited schools, hospitals, senior citizen facilities, and other community meetings and kept Conyers grounded in community concerns and activism. Parks participated in activism nationally during the mids, traveling to support the Selma-to-Montgomery Marchesthe Freedom Now Party, [ 15 ] and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization.

She also befriended Malcolm Xwho she regarded as a personal hero. Like many Detroit Blacks, Parks remained particularly concerned about housing issues. She herself lived in a neighborhood, Virginia Park, which had been compromised by highway construction and urban renewal. Bythese policies had destroyed 10, structures in Detroit, displacing 43, people, 70 percent of them African-American.

Parks lived just a mile from the center of the riot that took place in Detroit inand she considered housing discrimination a major factor that provoked the rosa parks autobiography for kids pdf. In the aftermath Parks collaborated with members of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Republic of New Afrika in raising awareness of police abuse during the conflict.

She served on a "people's tribunal" on August 30,investigating the killing of three young men by police during the Detroit uprising, in what came to be known as the Algiers Motel incident. The council facilitated the building of the only Black-owned shopping center in the country. She also supported and visited the Black Panther school in Oakland.

In the s, Parks organized for the freedom of political prisoners in the United Statesparticularly cases involving issues of self-defense. The s were a decade of loss for Parks in her personal life. Her family was plagued with illness; she and her husband had suffered stomach ulcers for years and both required hospitalization. In spite of her fame and constant speaking engagements, Parks was not a wealthy woman.

She donated most of the money from speaking to civil rights causes, and lived on her staff salary and her husband's pension. Medical bills and time missed from work caused financial strain that required her to accept assistance from church groups and admirers. Her husband died of throat cancer on August 19,and her brother, her only sibling, died of cancer that November.

Her personal ordeals caused her to become removed from the civil rights movement. She learned from a newspaper of the death of Fannie Lou Hameronce a close friend. Parks suffered two broken bones in a fall on an icy sidewalk, an injury which caused considerable and recurring pain. She decided to move with her mother into an apartment for senior citizens.

There she nursed her mother Leona through the final stages of cancer and geriatric dementia until she died in at the age of InParks—widowed and without immediate family—rededicated herself to civil rights and educational organizations. She co-founded the Rosa L. Parks Scholarship Foundation for college-bound high school seniors, [ 79 ] [ 80 ] to which she donated most of her speaker fees.

In Februaryshe co-founded, with Elaine Eason Steele, the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Developmentan institute that runs the "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours which introduce young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country. Parks also served on the Board of Advocates of Planned Parenthood.

Though her health declined as she entered her seventies, Parks continued to make many appearances and devoted considerable energy to these causes. Unrelated to her activism, Parks loaned quilts of her own making to an exhibit at Michigan State University of quilts by African-American residents of Michigan. InParks published Rosa Parks: My Storyan autobiography aimed at younger readers, which recounts her life leading to her decision to keep her seat on the bus.

A few years later, she published Quiet Strengthher memoir, which focuses on her faith. At age 81, Parks was robbed and assaulted in her home in central Detroit on August 30, The assailant, Joseph Skipper, broke down the door but claimed he had chased away an intruder. He requested a reward and when Parks paid him, he demanded more. Parks refused and he attacked her.

Hurt and badly shaken, Parks called a friend, who called the police. A neighborhood manhunt led to Skipper's capture and reported beating. Parks was treated at Detroit Receiving Hospital for facial injuries and swelling on the right side of her face. Parks said about the attack on her by the African-American man, "Many gains have been made But as you can see, at this time we still have a long way to go.

Suffering anxiety upon returning to her small central Detroit house following the ordeal, Parks moved into Riverfront Towersa secure high-rise apartment building. Learning of Parks's move, Little Caesars owner Mike Ilitch offered to pay for her housing expenses for as long as necessary. Louisfor cleanup which allowed them to have signs stating that this section of highway was maintained by the organization.

Since the state could not refuse the KKK's sponsorship, the Missouri legislature voted to name the highway section the "Rosa Parks Highway". When asked how she felt about this honor, she is reported to have commented, "It is always nice to be thought of. InParks filmed a cameo appearance for the television series Touched by an Angel. Parks was incapable of managing her own financial affairs by this time due to age-related physical and mental decline.

When her rent became delinquent and her impending eviction was highly publicized inexecutives of the ownership company announced they had forgiven the back rent and would allow Parks, by then 91 and in extremely poor health, to live rent-free in the building for the remainder of her life. Elaine Steele, manager of the nonprofit Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute, defended Parks's care and stated that the eviction notices were sent in error.

InParks's former residence in Detroit was threatened with demolition. A Berlin-based American artist, Ryan Mendozaarranged to have the house disassembled, moved to his garden in Germany, and partly restored. It served as a museum honoring Rosa Parks. Brown University was planning to exhibit the house, but the display was cancelled. Parks died of natural causes on October 24,at the age of 92, in her apartment on the east side of Detroit.

She and her husband never had children and she outlived her only sibling. She was survived by her sister-in-law Raymond's sister13 nieces and nephews and their families, and several cousins, most of them residents of Michigan or Alabama. City officials in Montgomery and Detroit announced on October 27,that the front seats of their city buses would be reserved with black ribbons in honor of Parks until her funeral.

Parks' coffin was flown to Montgomery and taken in a horse-drawn hearse to the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal AME church, where she lay in repose at the altar on October 29,dressed in the uniform of a church deaconess. A memorial service was held there the following morning. One of the speakers, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Ricesaid that if it had not been for Parks, she would probably have never become the Secretary of State.

In the evening the casket was transported to Washington, D. Parks was the 31st person, the first American who had not been a U. She was the first woman and the second black person to lie in honor in the Capitol.

Rosa parks autobiography for kids pdf: Segregation in America. Segregation is

With her body and casket returned to Detroit, for two days, Parks lay in repose at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. Her funeral service was seven hours long and was held on November 2,at the Greater Grace Temple Church in Detroit. After the service, an honor guard from the Michigan National Guard draped the U. As the hearse passed the thousands of people who were viewing the procession, many clapped, cheered loudly and released white balloons.

Parks was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery in the chapel's mausoleum. The chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel in her honor. By placing her statue in the heart of the nation's Capitol, we commemorate her work for a more perfect union, and we commit ourselves to continue to struggle for justice for every American.

Inthe documentary The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks was released on Peacock ; it is the first full-length documentary about Parks. In MarchParks filed a lawsuit Rosa Parks v. LaFace Records against American hip-hop duo OutKast and their record company, claiming that the duo's song " Rosa Parks ", the most successful radio single of their album Aqueminihad used her name without permission.

They also agreed to work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute to create educational programs about the life of Rosa Parks. The record label and OutKast admitted no wrongdoing. Responsibility for the payment of legal fees was not disclosed. Inrapper Nicki Minaj incorporated Rosa Parks into her song " Yikes " where she rapped, "All you bitches Rosa Park, uh-oh, get your ass up" in reference to the Montgomery bus boycott.

Inthe Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Parks's name and picture. She is card No. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikidata item. American civil rights activist — For other uses, see Rosa Parks disambiguation.

Parks inwith Martin Luther King Jr. Tuskegee, AlabamaU. Detroit, MichiganU. The Montgomery City Code allowed a bus driver to demand and then physically move any person, regardless of color, to relocate to another seat. This law enforced the existing belief that Black Americans be required to board the bus, pay the fare and then get off of the bus and re-board at the back.

The NAACP handed out pamphlets, took ads in the paper and sent the word out that people were to stay at home, not take public transportation, take a cab or walk to support the cause of equality. The estimated 40, Black Americans supported the boycott and buses appeared, almost completely empty. The boycott continued for a number of months, causing financial problems for the city.