The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began with Rosa Parks' refusal to give up a seat on a city bus, started the Civil Rights Movement and has continued to affect American society today. This influential event has changed the social views of Americans and has shown what they are capable of, while introducing men and women who are now familiarly known across the nation. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was making her way home from the Montgomery Fair Department Store. Parks had been new in town, and had found a job as a seamstress' assistant. Parks had moved to Montgomery with her husband, Raymond, where he had found work. As usual, she took a seat in the back section of the bus meant for African Americans in the city. The buses in Montgomery,
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During this time, factors as arbitrary as the color of your skin could define your class of citizenship. The Jim Crow laws were created, and African Americans were treated as second class citizens. Today, the pigment of a person's skin doesn't affect their "rank" in society as much as it use to. In present time, there are African American individuals who are looked up to in society, such as Michael Jordan, a well-known basketball player, Will Smith, a comedian, and music legends, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. The United States elected a black politician, Barack Obama, as their forty-fourth president, and also the first African American president of the United States. The Jim Crow laws "represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s" (PBS.org). Diane Nash, in her interview with Freedom Riders, stated, "Travel in the segregated South for black people was humiliating. The very fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white people that blacks were so subhuman and so inferior that we could not even use the public facilities that white people used" (PBS.org). The black community was greatly discriminated against in regards to public services and education, and even places as trivial as restaurants and public …show more content…
The results and process of this boycott proved to the American people that, with determination and effort, we can make a change. It presented to us the benefits of working together, despite our differences, and fighting for something that we all believe in. Not all of the citizens that participated in this boycott were African Americans, which is similar to boycotts now. Despite our race, religious views, sexuality, or class of citizenship, we fight for beliefs and views that we all share. Today, we fight for our rights and support our beliefs through many different methods or systems. We riot, boycott, write extremely intricate articles, and even convert our views into words of poetry and lyrics of songs. In 1947, the song "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow" by Bayard Rustin was brought to the public (PBS.org). This boycott, alone, didn't change the way we contest to subjects that disapprove our rights, but was one of the major factors that did. ("Jim Crow
During this time, factors as arbitrary as the color of your skin could define your class of citizenship. The Jim Crow laws were created, and African Americans were treated as second class citizens. Today, the pigment of a person's skin doesn't affect their "rank" in society as much as it use to. In present time, there are African American individuals who are looked up to in society, such as Michael Jordan, a well-known basketball player, Will Smith, a comedian, and music legends, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. The United States elected a black politician, Barack Obama, as their forty-fourth president, and also the first African American president of the United States. The Jim Crow laws "represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s" (PBS.org). Diane Nash, in her interview with Freedom Riders, stated, "Travel in the segregated South for black people was humiliating. The very fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white people that blacks were so subhuman and so inferior that we could not even use the public facilities that white people used" (PBS.org). The black community was greatly discriminated against in regards to public services and education, and even places as trivial as restaurants and public …show more content…
The results and process of this boycott proved to the American people that, with determination and effort, we can make a change. It presented to us the benefits of working together, despite our differences, and fighting for something that we all believe in. Not all of the citizens that participated in this boycott were African Americans, which is similar to boycotts now. Despite our race, religious views, sexuality, or class of citizenship, we fight for beliefs and views that we all share. Today, we fight for our rights and support our beliefs through many different methods or systems. We riot, boycott, write extremely intricate articles, and even convert our views into words of poetry and lyrics of songs. In 1947, the song "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow" by Bayard Rustin was brought to the public (PBS.org). This boycott, alone, didn't change the way we contest to subjects that disapprove our rights, but was one of the major factors that did. ("Jim Crow