The Rosa Parks Story

Plot

This is an account of the life of Mrs. Rosa L. Parks and her actions in the civil rights movement. After she refused to give up her seat for a white man on a racially segregated bus after a long day at work, she was arrested. Her example and treatment prompted a bus boycott as a major civil rights demonstration in Montgomery, Alabama; it lasted 381 days from 1955 to 1956.

The film shows her background and indicates the issues in the segregated society of Alabama and the Deep South. As a child, Rosa was educated at a private school run by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), where she was encouraged to overcome the limits of segregation. In her late-adolescence, she married Raymond Parks, a barber and advocate of equal rights. She joins the local branch of the NAACP, although her husband believes that the organization has been ineffective in its battle against legalized racism. She worked as a seamstress in a department store.

On December 1, 1955, after a tiring day at work, Rosa Parks took a seat in the designated "colored" section of a city bus in Montgomery, AL. When the "white" section at the front filled up; the driver James Blake, ordered Parks to relinquish her seat, as was the practice. She refused, and was arrested and jailed. Civil rights activists organized a one-day bus boycott the day of her trial (she was fined). With its success, they founded the Montgomery Improvement Association, and began a citywide bus boycott, led by a new local minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. The boycott lasted 381 days, made work by African-American citizens, many of whom made sacrifices of time and energy to walk to work and other destinations. As they comprised the majority of bus passengers, the boycott greatly reduced the profits the bus company earned. Eventually a ruling by the United States Supreme Court in a related case, declared bus segregation unconstitutional. The boycott was important for mobilizing people in the civil rights movement both in the Deep South and on a nationwide basis across the United States.

Cast

Awards