Title: Educating for Peace (Rosa Parks & Martin Luther King Jr. Biography)
English class: Fifth grade
Teacher: Mrs. Clavell
Standars:
Classwork:
Summary:
Rosa Parks Biography
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights",
and "the mother of the freedom movement". On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery,
Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James
F. Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger.
Parks' action was not the first of its kind to impact the civil rights issue.
Others had taken similar steps, including Lizzie
Jennings in 1854,Homer Plessy in 1892, Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, and Claudette Colvin on the same bus system nine months
before Parks, but Parks' civil
disobedience had the effect of
sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern
Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and
collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to
launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement. At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery
chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial
equality. Nonetheless, she took her action as a private citizen "tired of
giving in". Although widely honored in later years for her action, she
suffered for it, losing her job as a seamstress in a local department store.
Eventually, she moved to Detroit,
Michigan, where she found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as
secretary and receptionist to African-American U.S. Representative John Conyers. After retirement from
this position, she wrote an autobiography and lived a largely private life in
Detroit. In her final years she suffered from dementia,
and became involved in a lawsuit filed on her behalf against American hip-hop duo OutKast. Parks eventually received many honors ranging from the 1979 Spingarn Medal to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and a posthumous statue in the United
States Capitol's National
Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman and second
non-U.S. government official granted the posthumous honor of lying in honor at the Capitol Rotunda.
http://www.rosaparks.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=118&Itemid=60
"One person can change the world"
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent
leader in the African-American
Civil Rights Movement. He is best
known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the
world, using nonviolent methods
following the teachings of Mahatma
Gandhi. King has become a
national icon in the history of modern
American liberalism. A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) in 1957,
serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King
delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he expanded American
values to include the vision of a color blind society, and established his
reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history. In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial
discrimination through civil disobedience and other nonviolent means. By the
time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and
stopping the Vietnam War. King was assassinated
on April 4, 1968, in Memphis,
Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional
Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986.http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html
http://www.lib.lsu.edu/hum/mlk/srs218.html
http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/king_m.htm
"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits." Acceptance Speech at Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony, December 10, 1964
