Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913 and died on October 24, 2005. She was an American activist in the civil rights movement. The United States Congress has called her "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement".

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery (Alabama, USA) Rosa Parks returned from her job as a seamstress in a department store. When she got on the bus, she took a seat at the back, in the places allowed for citizens considered of color (Afro-descendants, indigenous people, Orientals ...). As the bus traveled the route, seats began to run out and some people remained standing.

Noticing that white people were standing, the driver stopped the bus, and asked three black women to stand up. Rosa Parks refused to do that, and she didn’t do so, even when the driver threatened to report her. Finally, Rosa Parks was arrested, prosecuted, and convicted of violating the municipal law.

During 381 days, black people of the city of Montgomery refused to board any bus. The boycott of the transport company involved 42,000 people, representing 70% of bus users.

Finally, in November 1956, the United States Supreme Court declared racial segregation on buses unconstitutional. The Supreme Court order reached Montgomery on December 20. On the 21st, black people that had been segregated got back on the buses, only then, they could sit wherever they wanted.

She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders.

She also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job and received death threats for years afterwards.

Parks continued to insist that the struggle for justice was not over and there was more work to be done.

Parks became the first African-American woman to have a statue in the National Statuary Hall in the Capitol.

SILVIA VIÑAO - ENGLISH FOR FUN 3C