Yesterday marked 64 years since Rosa Parks made history by refusing to give up her seat on the Bus. This act launched the Montgomery Bus Boycotts and subsequently shifted the Civil Rights movement.
The move ignited the boycott that led to a federal court ruling against segregation in public transportation. This was not the first time she had protested bus segregation either.
In fact, she had an interaction with the same bus driver in 1943 in which she was ejected from the bus for refusing to enter through the back door.
A decade before Rosa Parks refused to give a white man her seat on a Montgomery bus, she investigated the vicious Recy Taylor rape case in Abbeville, AL for the NAACP and led a national campaign against sexual assault on black women. She worked for equality for her entire life.
Parks’ traveled throughout Alabama to interview black people who had suffered racial terror, violence, or other injustice prior to that December day.
In the years following, the Montgomery Boycotts took off, Parks continued to be a key organizer but faced many penalties including arrests, death threats, and even being forced out of her hometown.
A beautiful statue commemorating her fight for racial equality was unveiled by Alabama governor Clay Ivey, see video below: