Rosa Parks and the Rosa Parks Biography

Rosa Parks and the Rosa Parks Biography: "Although three black women had been arrested earlier that year for similar acts of defiance, and Rosa Parks herself had been thrown off a bus by the same driver 12 years before, this time the opponents of segregation were prepared to mount a counterattack. The Montgomery chapter of the NAACP had been looking for a test case to challenge the legality of segregated bus seating and to woo public opinion with a series of protests.

The morning after her arrest, Rosa Parks agreed to let the NAACP take on her case. Another organization, the Women's Political Council (WPC), led by JoAnn Robinson, initiated the idea of a one-day bus boycott. Within 24 hours of Rosa Parks's defiance, the WPC had distributed more than 52,000 fliers announcing the bus boycott, which was to take place the day of Rosa Parks's trial. On December 5, as buses went through their routes almost empty, Rosa Parks was convicted by the local court. She refused to pay the fine of $14, and with the help of her lawyer, Ed D. Gray, she appealed to the circuit court.

Rosa Parks was widely known as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement, but her iconic stature afforded her little financial security. She lost her job as a seamstress at Montgomery Fair and was unable to find other work in Montgomery. Rosa Parks and her husband relocated to Detroit, Michigan, in 1957, where they struggled financially for the next eight years. Rosa Parks's fortunes improved somewhat in 1965, when U.S. congressional representative John F. Conyers Jr. hired her as an administrative assistant, a position she held until 1987.."

Excerpt...click link to read entire article