Rosa Parks by Anne Schraff

Author:Anne Schraff [Schraff, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2007-09-28T18:52:39+00:00

Parks Book 9/17/07 12:23 PM Page 33

C H A P T E R

6

In January 1956 Rosa Parks lost her job. She was fired. She did not think it was because of the bus boycott. But, it was very hard for the family.

Parks took part time sewing jobs to keep food on the table. Parks spent a lot of time doing volunteer work for the MIA. She found ways for many black people to get to work without using the bus. She coordinated rides for people.

She helped set up special bus stops for black taxicabs at black churches.

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As the boycott continued, the white business community was suffering.

Black people did not shop in downtown Montgomery anymore.

The bus companies were desperate with all of their black riders gone. Some white people became angry. They made threats against Rosa and others.

On January 30, somebody planted a bomb at Rev. Martin Luther King’s house. His wife and baby were inside the house. If they had not been in the back of the house, they might have been hurt or killed.

Some white people blamed King for making the bus boycott more effective.

In February, Parks, King, and 86 other civil rights activists were arrested for setting up the bus boycott. There was an Alabama state law against boycotts.

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Rosa Parks was becoming world

famous now. News reporters came from all over the world to see what was happening in Montgomery. It was all because Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on that bus.

Many people praised Parks for her courage. But, life was very hard for Parks and her family. Leona McCauley, Rosa’s mother, was very ill. Raymond Parks was nervous and sick. He could not work.

All the pressure was having an effect on the family. Rosa Parks had no steady job. She found it hard to pay her bills.

For the first time in her life, Parks took money from her friends to keep going.

On June 5, 1956, the federal court ruled that Alabama’s bus segregation law was unconstitutional. They said it 35

Parks Book 9/17/07 12:23 PM Page 36

violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave equal protection to all Americans.

Alabama appealed to the United States Supreme Court. In November the Supreme Court agreed that bus

segregation was unconstitutional. That meant all buses all over the South had to be integrated. Black people could no longer be told they had to sit in certain seats.

The bus boycott was over. The civil rights workers had won. Rosa Parks had won.

In December Rosa Parks got on a Montgomery city bus. She sat where she wanted. Nobody said a word.

The integration of Montgomery’s bus system went well overall. But, there were some ugly incidents. Somebody fired a 36

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