Equality: Rosa Parks As A Role Model

Rosa Parks was born in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4, 1913. She was highly religious and belonged to the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Parks’s father, James McCauley was a carpenter and stonemason, and her mother, Leona Edwards was a schoolteacher. Parks’s mother taught her to stand up for what she believed in and to defend her rights. I thought it was interesting how childhood events influenced her to defend her seat on the bus. Parks saw Booker T. Washington as a role model and wanted to help African-Americans excel in America. She was also inspired by her grandfather, who would defy the Jim Crow laws. He would introduce himself with his last name, instead of his first name like the Jim Crow laws stated and he would also refuse to …show more content…
The Jim Crow laws really started being enforced in Montgomery when African-Americans could no longer sit in the bus and instead had to sit on top with the luggage. This outraged Parks. This event led her to learn about the bus boycott of 1900, which inspired her later on when she defended her seat on the bus. As a child, Parks was known for her defiant nature. This led to Parks’s mother enrolling her in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls when she was eleven. However, the school was shut down and burned in 1928. This was because the school became a Ku Klux Klan target since they encouraged racial equality. This event is the reason why Parks wanted to become a teacher, but had to drop out to take care of her mother. Rosa Parks was eighteen when she met Raymond Parks in 1931 and they got married in December 1932. Like Rosa, he also actively tried to help the African-American community. They were both inspired each other and he is also another factor in what made Parks defend her seat on the …show more content…
Everyone was worried about her because she was receiving death threats. After a call from her cousin, Thomas Williamson, she finally decided it was time to move. That August, Rosa and Raymond moved to Detroit. That was not the only reason why they moved. After the bus boycott, nobody would hire Rosa or Raymond because they were seen as troublemakers and were bad for business. The African American leaders in Montgomery also started to ignore her. Rosa had become an icon and people in Montgomery did not want her for that reason. The constant ridicule was too much for Rosa Parks and her husband so they decided moving was their best option. Rosa Parks did not let the move slow her down. She quickly joined the local NAACP chapter and continued her work as an