Rosa Parks Reading Comprehension from My English Pages

Reading Comprehension - Ramadan

Develop your reading skills. Read the following text about Rosa Parks. Then answer the comprehension questions

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was born on February 4, 1913 and died on October 24, 2005. She was an African-American civil and was called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement".

Rosa Parks' first event in her fight for civil rights was in Montgomery, Alabama. On December 1, 1955, Parks refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. This disobedience and defiance had the effect of sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.

Although widely honored in later years for her action, she suffered for it, losing her job as a seamstress in a local department store. Eventually, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to African-American U.S. Representative John Conyers. After retirement from this position, she wrote an autobiography and lived a largely private life in Detroit. In her final years she suffered from dementia, and became involved in a lawsuit filed on her behalf against American hip-hop duo OutKast.

Parks eventually received many honors ranging from the 1979 Spingarn Medal to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Her death in 2005 was a major story in the United States' leading newspapers. She was granted the posthumous honor of lying in honor at the Capitol Rotunda.

Source: Wikipedia

Comprehension

• 1. Parks refused to give up her seat on a train.

  2. a. True

  3. b. False

  4. Parks was asked to leave her seat for an old lady

  5. a. True

  6. b. False

  7. After the incident she lost her job as a seamstress.

  8. a. True

  9. b. False

  10. She was the only prominent figure to launch the civil rights movement.

  11. a. True

  12. b. False

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