In 1955, in the US, Radio Station Bill Haley’s hit “Rock Around the Clock” around the clock, Billy Wilder’s romantic comedy “The Seven Year Itch” starring Marilyn Munro premiered in New York, and the Western Series “Gansmok “Was launched at. Television. This was the year when future seller Bill Gates, Bruce Willis and Whop Goldberg were born.
And this was the year when two white people brutally murdered 14 -year -old Emmet Til in Mississippi, who was black.
The program was seen as a catalyst for the emerging civil rights movement, as the protests followed the acquittal of the killers in the court.
At the same time, an African-American woman named Rosa Parks was arrested, promoting a protest campaign that would be in history as Montgomery bus boycott-another important moment in the Nigrical Rights Movement.
Isolation protested
What’s widespread in racial isolation South
There were separate schools, park benches and even water fountains for black people and white people.
Hence there are rules for public transport. White people were sitting in front of the bus, black people had to sit back; They were tolerated for some time in the middle seats, provided they woke up when they wanted to sit white passengers.
The black people had to board the bus via the front door to pay the driver, but then go backwards to the vehicle to get down again and before going back.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, who worked as a seamstress at a department store in Montgomery, Alabama, took a seat in a city bus after work. She was 42 years old, married, and was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
When the parks were asked to get up and leave their seat a white passenger, he refused. The bus driver threatened to call the police and arrested him, but he replied, “You can do it,” and kept sitting. The police came and arrested him.
Arrest boycotted
In view of the arrest of the parks, the Women’s Political Council of Montgomari called for a boycott, urged people in the black community to avoid taking a city on Monday, the day the Task of Roja Parks was determined, and walk or take For this a taxi instead – most people paid attention to this call.
Rosa parks were fined $ 14 (€ 13), including the cost of the court, to violate “disorganized conduct” and isolation laws.
The bus boycott, which was still coordinated in Montgomery, was coordinated in a relatively new pastor, Martin Luther Kingjra, which was only in the mid -20s at that time.
The role of his leadership gave him birth to enemies. He survived two bomb attacks, but was not determined by giving birth to non -violent resistance.
The boycott ended on 13 November 1956 after the US Supreme Court pronounced the verdict that Alabama’s bus isolation laws were unconstitutional. This was a major success for the movement of civil rights, showing that non -violent protests could work against all obstacles.
Experience -shaped experience Martin Luther King Jr., who became the chairman of the Southern Christian leadership conference (SCLC), a civil rights organization that came out of the bus boycott.
The group started March in 1963 on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King made his famous “I have a Dream” speech to over 200,000 people.
‘Make this world a better place for all people’
Rosa Parks was not the first woman to protect her seat in bus and her place in society.
But the fact that she was an adult woman, marriage, no police records, and was involved with NAACP, where she voluntarily worked as a secretary, she made her case an example. She knew what she was doing and ready for the consequences of her actions, to do “she could” make this world a better place to enjoy freedom for all people. ”
“As far as I can remember, I knew that there is some other way of life, which could be misbehaved to people due to their skin color,” he said at a NAACP meeting in 1956.
The decision not to leave its seat in the bus was a logical result. “People always say that I did not give my seat because I was bound, but it is not true. I was not physically tied, or I was usually not at the end of the working day,” written in his autobiography , “My story.”
“I was not old, although some people have an image that was then being old. I was forty -two. No, only tired which I was tired.”
An immediate result of his work of disobedience was that he lost his job and started receiving death threats. Since she was no longer safe in Montgomery, she and her husband went to Detroit to live with Parks’ brother.
The parks worked as a seamstress and continued to fight for civil rights and freedom. And until she retired from 1965, she worked for the African-American Congressman as the Secretary of John Conservo.
In 1998, various American states started Roja Parks Days – some on December 1, their arrest anniversary, others on 4 February, on their birthday.
When her house in Detroit was determined for demolition in 2016, her niece blew it and Ryan Meno, an American artist, finished it and rebuilt I in Berlin.
In 2020, it was yet reesmbled again, this time based on a royal palace in Naples, Italy. Mendoza still hopes that it will one day return to America, where it can serve as a memorial for the civil rights movement.
Rosa Parks died in 2005 at the age of 92. She was honored in Capital Rotunda and was the first woman to bear this belief. So what is the first black American woman to be honored with a statue in Capital.
This article was written and published in German in 2023. It has been updated.