I have copied lines from a speech made by Martin Luther King, Jr. at the time of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott that began in 1955, which helped inspire Rosa. Prior to December 1, 1955, when Rosa McCauly Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a White man, four other young women had also refused and been arrested:  Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith all deserve our thanks for their bravery in the face of blatant racial discrimination and hostility. 

*That Rosa Park’s name is the one we all remember appears the result of a number of factors (including the presence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Montgomery at that time). That made her case the one the NAACP decided to take to the Supreme Court; including horrendous, brutally humiliating treatment of Blacks who rode buses in Montgomery (and elsewhere in the South) at that time.  Black people had to enter a bus in the front and pay, get off the bus and reenter through the back in order to sit, on limited back-of-the-bus seating; if a White man or woman needed a seat, Black people were ordered to give up their seats immediately.

Black military personnel returning home after fighting bravely in World War II were often treated worse than those not in uniform, beaten or lynched. They needed a “double Victory”(abroad and at home)  to survive the war.

See Rosa Parks, A Biography, by Joyce A. Hanson.  2011, Greenwood.