Essay --

Hannah Ricks Ricks, 1 Mrs. Miller English 12 11 November 2013 Rosa Parks How important are rights and equality? How many would walk 20 miles a day in rain or snow just to get the point across that bus segregation, among other forms of segregation are unjust or how many would be willing to give up their lives, jobs, protection for their families, homes, friends and others for change that is deserved? Rosa Louise McCauley Parks among many other civil right activists did just that. Rosa went through many struggles and trials in her life for the fight for freedom. She was an amazing example to all people, not just African Americans. Even though she wasn't well educated she still made a huge impact in society. By Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus, she changed society in many ways: she gave hope to those races that wanted change and equal rights for themselves. Rosa got her high school diploma at age twenty thanks to encouragement of her husband Raymond: she dropped out in eleventh grade to take care of her mother and grandma. As children the black students had to walk to their school, which was often inadequate while the whites had school buses that took them to their brand new school. As long as she could remember, there was a black world and a white world, the bus was among the first ways she realized it. Parks recalled a time when the Ku Klux Klan marched down the street in front of their house while her grandfather guarded the front door with a shotgun, she could not ignore the racism of her society. Ricks, 2 Rosa suffered many things in her life but some... ...t to accomplish this goal: "President Barack Obama unveiled a statue honoring Parks in the nation’s Capital building. He remembered Parks, according to The New York Times, by saying "In a single moment, with the simplest of gestures, she helped change America and change the world. . . . And today, she takes her rightful place among those who shaped this nation’s course." Rosa Parks helped shape society into what it is today. Not all racism is gone but she made a huge impact, and tried her best to for equal rights to the oppressed. She gave so much in order for blacks to have a little bit of freedom. It took quite a while to make an impact but it had to start somewhere, and that somewhere was in the heart of Rosa Parks, it was on that bus when she decided she had had enough, it was in all the Negros that joined in a gave their lives for equality and civil rights.