Rosa Parks
On December 1, 1955, a 42 year old named woman Rosa Parks on her way from home boarded a segregated Montgomery bus and refused to obey the bus driver James F. Blake’s order to give her seat to a standing white passenger. This refusal sparked a new motive in the black American’s society to contest for the inequalities they experienced and revoke the laws of segregation. Parks was a passenger seated in the middle of the segregated bus, approximately 10 seats behind the white section. Soon the bus was full and a white man was forced to stand because there were no empty seats for the white people. As the white man stood, the bus driver said that the 4 black people standing behind the white section must give up their seat so that the white man would not have to stand. Parks quietly refused to stand up so that the white man could sit. Later, Parks was arrested for breaching the proposed Jim Crow laws of segregation and convicted. She appealed for her conviction and questioned the legality of segregation. This acted as a precedent for fellow black American activists and initiated a boycott of boarding the Montgomery bus. Black Americans approximately accumulated 75% of the passengers of the Montgomery bus system and this boycott began to pose a serious threat to the economy of the bus company. Parks initiated a great precedent which bestowed a great change to the community of the United States. With the cooperation and commitment from the population of the discriminated black Americans, Parks posed a threat to the government as the black population began to rise.