biography on rosa parks
...ked with the Voters League, where she prepared blacks to register. The NAACP chose Rosa Parks to attend a desegregation workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. From her experience Rosa Parks said she felt for the first time, that this could be a unified society. She also said, it was there that she gained the strength to bring freedom for black people and all oppressed people. On December 1st, 1955, Rosa Parks, at the age of forty two, decided to take the bus after a hard day at the department store, where she worked as a seamstress. She sat down in the middle section of the bus, which was the first seat of the black section. The bus started to get crowded and the bus driver ordered her to move back so a white man could sit down. Parks refused to move even when the driver threatened to call the police. Parks was arrested, fingerprinted and jailed. This was not the first time she protested segregation. She often took the stairs instead of riding “blacks only” elevators. She was respected for this, in the black community. The black community was outraged that an upstanding citizen like Rosa Parks was arrested. The Women’s Political Council distributed fliers throughout the community urging African-Americans to boycott the bus line on the day of Parks's trial. That day, ninety percent of the African Americans who used the bus system, did not ride the bus. The following Monday Mrs. Parks was found guilty of disorderly conduct and fined. That evening a meeting was held at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where it was decided that continuing the bus boycott would be a good way to protest the segregated bus system. The Montgomery Improvement Association was formed at the meeting and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was selected as the new o...