The "Poster-Girl" for Non-Violence Resistance, Rosa Parks!

Usually we'd have the usual phrase,the "poster-boy" but in this it's all about the "poster-girl." This is not your average woman. We're talking about an influential and important that helped refine freedom: Rosa Parks. She worked as the secretary for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) for a many years. 

Rosa Parks was born  in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913, to Leona and James McCauley, a teacher and a carpenter, respectively. She was small as a child, suffering from poor health with chronic tonsillitis. When her parents separated, she moved with her mother to Pine Level, just outside the capital of Montgomery. She grew up on a farm with her maternal grandparents, mother, and younger brother Sylvester. 

She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including president of the local chapter of the NAACP Edgar Nixon; and a new minister in town who gained national prominence in the civil rights movement. She had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for training activists for workers' rights and racial equality. She acted as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job as a seamstress in a local department store.

Rosa Parks was perceived as hard-working ans quiet. But on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver, NOT ONCE, BUT THREE TIMES!  James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation. But she was certainly the last one to remain seated when everyone the other two people gave in to their resistance. Others had taken similar steps in the twentieth century, including Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys  in 1955, and Claudette Colvin nine months before Parks. NAACP organizers believed that Parks was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience. But overall, she exemplifies that it is possible to show resistance in a non-violent way, without the use of weapons or any other methods. 

Parks received national recognition, including the NAACP's 1979 Spingarn Medal, the 

Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal , and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman and second non-U.S. government official to lie in honor at the Capitol Rotunda.

APPARTS on Rosa Parks

Arrest Report on Rosa Parks
Author: City Of Montgomery 

Place/Time: December 1,1955 in Montgomery Alabama

Prior Knowledge: She worked as the secretary for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) for a many years. 

Audience: Everyone

Reason: On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

Main Idea: Rosa Parks is a great example of non-violent resistance.

Significance: This single act of non-violent resistance sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, an eleven-month struggle to desegregate the city buses. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., the boycott resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that public bus segregation is unconstitutional and catapulted both King and Parks into national spotlight.

The Trials of Reconstruction

Ever since the Jeffersonian Era, the ideology of "All men are created equal" has been widely advocated by Thomas Jefferson himself, as well as many other philosophers. History repeats itself.  Now, we face ourselves with the burning question: Since the period of Reconstruction have people of color gained equal rights? Even today, people of color are still fighting for equality although many can argue that equality has been granted and guaranteed to all. The ideology of "equality" is still today, simply an illusion for Americans, and in many countries is far from being an accomplished task.

The Freedom's Bureau exemplifies one of the greatest injustices ever aimed at African Americans. In June 1865, some 40,000 freed people had been settled on "Sherman Land" in South Carolina and Georgia, in accordance with Special Field Order 15.  All land in federal had to be returned to its original owners. This meant, that African Americans who were stated to been "free" were no longer free. They were taken the opportunity to own land. Although the African Americans were told that were officially "free", many may ask themselves what was the point of having freedom if they weren't allowed impacting decisions. when THEY were still owned, they roof and shelter covered, but it all came with a couple of perks.. Those perks meant working long hours regardless of the weather conditions, and some may even require working in hazardous conditions.

Today, there is the constant reminder that there is an existent barrier between gender and color. In a recent article on the Huffington Post, it showed how people of color and women got paid 58-68 cents as compared to men and people that are not of color. In 2002 and 2010, there were acts that were proposed in order to change all of this. Unfortunately, out of both of the times that they were proposed, not once did it pass. Later on 2013,  once again, there will be an attempt to change the barrier of the paid amount towards people of color.  That barrier between people of color clearly still exists well after the Trials of Reconstruction.