What is Rosa Parks Day?
On February 4th, or December 1st, Rosa Parks Day honors an American Civil Rights hero twice a year. Rosa Parks, the civil rights leader, is honored on the holiday.
Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, after a long Thursday at work, boarded a bus. She took her seat in the 'colored' section. The bus began to fill as she rode the Cleveland Avenue bus home.
According to Montgomery's city charter, bus drivers were allowed to assign seats. However, it did not encourage passengers to demand that passengers give up their seats. Despite this, bus operators routinely requested black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers when public transportation became full.
She refused when the bus driver begged Parks to give up her seat. She was arrested by police, and the rest of Civil Rights history follows. Parks was found guilty of violating the city code and fined her $10 more in court fees on December 5, 1955.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by E.D. Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr., organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott for the date of Rosa Park's trial. The resistance campaign in Montgomery lasted for several months, destroying the transportation system.
