The Influence of Rosa Parks Essay Example

All through the United State’s history, there have been several different encouraging and uplifting turns of events by many different influences that have changed people’s lives especially those who have suffered and fought racism. One of these people who have been life changing includes Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks is one of the biggest inspirations and changed the lives’ of African Americans in the civil rights movement, now, and hopefully forever. Rosa Parks was a female civil rights activist who made a big turning point in history when she wouldn’t give up her seat to a white male when she was asked to on a bus and this resulted in her getting arrested. Rosa’s courageousness didn’t only inspire people here in the United States, she also inspired everybody around the world with different backgrounds, ethics, and cultures.  Rosa Parks changed the world by standing up for herself and showing courage to whites which later resulted in Rosa being named the mother of the civil rights movement. 

Rosa McCauley was born on February 4th of 1913 in a city called Tuskegee which is South-Eastern Alabama. When she was two years old, her parents James and Leona separated which resulted in Rosa and her brother Sylvester to move with their mother to a small farm in Pine Level Alabama with their grandparents. Rosa was very aware of what was going on around her from the time she was young to when she was a teenager, “She witnessed nights rides by the Ku Klux Klan and listened in fear as lynchings occured near her home”(Walk of Fame, 2). Rosa’s family have experienced many different racial separations in their lives, it was normal back in the 1900’s. Rosa Parks' grandparents were both enslaved by whites and strongly believed in African Americans and people of color to be equal compared to whites. With Rosa living with her grandparents and her mother during her whole childhood resulted in her being more aware of the racial discrimination around her. She wanted to stand up for the racial inequalities and this urged her to become an activist for what was happening in the world around her. In one of the experiences that Rosa had, “Park’s grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members walked down the street” (Biography, 3). Rosa remembers her family members being scared for their lives due to the fact that they didn’t want to be killed. Rosa also remembers “going to sleep as a little girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing lynching and being afraid the house would burn down”(Academy of Acheivement, 3). Due to all the violence and fearing for her and everybody else's lives, she joined the civil rights movement at a very young age and was very active in it. Rosa Parks met a barber that was named Raymond Parks and married him in 1932. Raymond was an activist as well fighting the Jim Crow segregation at the time. Later the couple decided to join the Montgomery National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for about 12 years. Eventually Rosa was elected the secretary of the NAACP due to the fact that she really fought for equal rights and everybody thought she would be the perfect advocate for it.