Write a short essay answering ONE of the following questions using the Rosa Park Memoir (Rosa Parks: My Story)
QUESTION 1
1955, Rosa Parks defied law and custom to help overtur segregation in the Montgomery. Alabama bus system. Her act of refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger is said to have begun the direct action Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Yet for decades preceding Ms. Parks brave act, year after year, all across the South, African Americans defied segregation laws on buses and trains and were arrested and jailed for this. And no movement arose to protest this.
Was there more to starting the Civil Rights Movement than Parks individual act of defiance? Based on evidence from Rosa Parks: My Story, argue the relative importance of Parks refusal to give up her seat compared with other decisions and actions she and others took. Take a position on what was most important in starting the movement.
OR
QUESTION 2:
The popular image of Rosa Parks as a meek, passive, tum-the-other-cheek sort of person is quite different than the impression that emerges from her memoir. Indeed, as a child, when a white boy called her “nigger she threatened him. “If you come over here. we’ll give you a good beating (p.51). As an adult Parks hosts a meeting of heavily. armed civil rights activists in her home.
Using evidence from Rosa Parks: My Story, support or oppose the argument that Rosa Parks agreed with the necessity of armed (violent) self defense as a political tool in the fight for Black civil rights.
The essay should be roughly four to five double-spaced, printed pages with references (footnotes or endnotes). Your grade will be based on the quality of your critical thinking, the clarity of your writing, and the thoroughness and appropriateness of the evidence you use to support your positions and arguments.