Learning Activity:
1. Watch the video “Historical Thinking Matters: Rosa Parks.” 2. After finishing the video, in groups of three students should engage in answering the following discussion questions:
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On December 1, 1955, nine months after a 15-year-old high school student, Claudette Colvin, refused to give up her seat on a public bus on Montgomery, Alabama to make room for a white passenger, Rosa Parks (the "mother of the Civil Rights Movement") did the same thing. Parks was secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and had recently returned from a meeting at the Highlander Center in Tennessee where nonviolent civil disobedience as a strategy had been discussed. Parks was arrested, tried, and convicted for disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. After word of this incident reached the black community, 50 African-American leaders gathered and organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott to demand a bus system in which passengers would be treated equally.[19]
After the city rejected many of their suggested reforms, the NAACP, led by E.D. Nixon, pushed for full desegregation of public buses. With the support of most of Montgomery's 50,000 African Americans, the boycott lasted for 381 days, until the local ordinance segregating African Americans and whites on public buses was repealed. Ninety percent of African Americans in Montgomery partook in the boycotts, which reduced bus revenue significantly, as they comprised the majority of the riders. In November 1956, a federal court ordered Montgomery's buses desegregated and the boycott ended.[19]
Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister, was president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization that directed the boycott. The lengthy protest attracted national attention for him and the city. His eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and American idealism created a positive impression on people both inside and outside the South.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Civil_Rights_Movement_%281954%E2%80%9368%29#Rosa_Parks_and_the_Montgomery_Bus_Boycott.2C_1955.E2.80.931956
After the city rejected many of their suggested reforms, the NAACP, led by E.D. Nixon, pushed for full desegregation of public buses. With the support of most of Montgomery's 50,000 African Americans, the boycott lasted for 381 days, until the local ordinance segregating African Americans and whites on public buses was repealed. Ninety percent of African Americans in Montgomery partook in the boycotts, which reduced bus revenue significantly, as they comprised the majority of the riders. In November 1956, a federal court ordered Montgomery's buses desegregated and the boycott ended.[19]
Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister, was president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization that directed the boycott. The lengthy protest attracted national attention for him and the city. His eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and American idealism created a positive impression on people both inside and outside the South.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Civil_Rights_Movement_%281954%E2%80%9368%29#Rosa_Parks_and_the_Montgomery_Bus_Boycott.2C_1955.E2.80.931956