Remembering Rosa Parks on the 60th Anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

In her later years, Parks said 26-year-old King was picked because he was a newcomer to Montgomery and didn’t have any enemies in the community.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2015, in Montgomery, Ala.

The small act of defiance would ignite the Civil Rights movement in the American south. Parks would be portrayed as a woman too exhausted to move, but in her memoir My Story she said that was not the case.

Terri Lee Freeman, the president of the National Civil Rights Museum, said Parks’ legacy impacted all, especially the freedoms that young people enjoy today. Bus rider Callie Greer says that buses are not a priority because they are used by people with low incomes, and according to a 2007 survey by the bus system, 84 percent of bus riders are black.

Wondering why the name Rosa Parks is trending on December 1?

When she passed away at the age of 92 in 2005, Congress voted to have Parks honored by having her coffin at the Capitol Rotunda for a public viewing.

Clinton invoked a sermon Dr. King gave at this church the first night of the bus boycott.

Tuesday marks the 60th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger back in 1955. In response, the city’s Black community, led by Martin Luther King Jr., organized the famous Montgomery bus boycott.

The “Beyond the Bus” Youth Empowerment Summit brought together almost 350 high school and college students from across the state to learn about the boycott.

The Supreme Court in Washington already had before it a test case against segregation on buses operating in Columbia, S.C. The United States Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., had ruled in this case that segregation must be ended.

Martin Luther King wrote “Actually, no one can understand the action of Ms Parks unless they realise that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, ‘I can take it no longer'”.

“We are all very encouraged to make a difference”, Eller said. Thousands of people walked everywhere they needed to go – sometimes for miles – rather than take municipal transportation. She sat down. A short while later, as the bus grew more crowded, she was ordered by the bus driver to move toward the back of the bus to free her seat up for a white person.

Rosa admitted that she had a “life history of being rebellious”, according to The Nation.

“We’ve gone from a situation where racism is overt in the form of you can’t use this water foundation to there are policies and procedures that just accidentally suspend more black kids than white kids”, said Ebony Howard, Managing Attorney for the Alabama Southern Poverty Law Office.