5 things you didn't know about Rosa Parks

Several months before Rosa Parks made headlines, other black residents of Montgomery had already publicly challenged bus segregation.

On 2 March 1955, Claudette Colvin remained seated on a segregated bus when ordered to stand.

Police arrested her, and she later became one of the four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the court case that struck down bus segregation laws in Alabama.

The federal court ruling was delivered on 13 November 1956 and enforced on 20 December, which brought legal victory to the boycott. 

Importantly, Colvin was not alone. Mary Louise Smith and Aurelia Browder also defied segregation before Parks.

However, NAACP officials believed that Parks was a respected, middle-aged woman with no scandal attached to her name and that she would be more effective in court and in the public eye.

For that reason, when she refused to give up her seat, community leaders chose her case to initiate a large-scale legal and social campaign. 

By the time Rosa Parks refused to move seats, she had already worked for more than a decade on civil rights locally.

She joined the Montgomery NAACP in 1943 and worked for years as its secretary.

In that role she routinely kept records of racial abuse cases, supported investigations and helped victims deal with an unfair legal system.

She also worked as advisor to the NAACP Youth Council, where she mentored young activists and encouraged political awareness in the next generation. 

Often, she travelled across the county on behalf of the NAACP, where she collected testimonies that others found too dangerous to touch.

For example, she helped with the case of Recy Taylor, a black woman who suffered a violent assault by six white men in 1944.

Rosa Parks had interviewed Taylor, had helped organise the Committee for Equal Justice, and had attracted national attention to the case.

Later, in 1955, she attended a workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, where she studied strategies for nonviolent resistance.

The school had also trained activists such as Septima Clark and John Lewis, and its role in preparing civil rights leaders later drew concern from some Southern authorities.

Her arrest resulted from years of steady work against systemic racism rather than from inexperience. 

Rosa Parks did not leave her job on 1 December 1955 with the intention of launching a boycott.

After she had worked all day at Montgomery Fair, she boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus and sat in the designated "coloured" section.

When the white section filled, the driver ordered four black passengers to stand. Three obeyed, but she did not. 

The driver was James F. Blake, who had previously humiliated her in 1943 by forcing her off his bus. A

t the time, she later explained, she felt exhausted by constant demands that she give up her seat.

She knew the risk of arrest, yet her refusal came from a moral resolve that had formed long before that moment.

Some later accounts portrayed her as acting spontaneously, but her years of civil rights involvement had prepared her for the consequences.

She knew the law. She had seen others arrested. She understood what her action would mean.

Although Rosa Parks' arrest created a clear rallying point, the movement behind the boycott had already taken shape as leaders in Montgomery's black community had discussed potential protest plans for years, and the Women's Political Council, led by Jo Ann Robinson, had prepared for such an event.

Within hours of Parks' arrest, they distributed more than 35,000 leaflets, and they used the facilities of Alabama State College, where Robinson taught, mainly for leaflet distribution.

So, on 5 December 1955, black residents of Montgomery refused to ride the buses, and, that evening, a mass meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church drew more than 5,000 people and led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association.

A young minister named Martin Luther King Jr. was chosen to lead it. Under his guidance, the protest continued for over a year, and as a result bus revenue collapsed by more than 65 percent, national media attention intensified, and federal courts eventually ruled against segregation.

The boycott succeeded not through a single act, but through community-wide planning and firm determination.

Rosa Parks had become widely known as a civil rights symbol. She suffered personal and financial hardship for years after her arrest, especially losing her job at Montgomery Fair.

Her husband, Raymond, also lost his position, and the couple lived under constant threats.

Local white officials refused to protect them, and some black leaders did not always offer consistent support.

The homes of movement figures such as E.D. Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr. were bombed during this time, which increased their sense of impending danger. 

Eventually, they moved to Detroit in August 1957, where they continued to face hardship.

For years, Rosa Parks struggled to find steady work and dealt with ongoing stress.

However, from 1965 to 1988, she worked as an aide to Congressman John Conyers, supporting local initiatives and civil rights legislation.

She remained active in speaking against police brutality and social inequality, and she often worked quietly behind the scenes.

Rosa Parks was an important figure of nonviolent resistance, and, over time, she received the recognition she deserved.

She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

After her death in 2005, she lay in honour at the US Capitol, and she became the first woman and the first African American to receive that specific tribute as a private citizen.

Her quiet courage, supported by years of activism, gradually helped push a nation toward justice.