SEARCH:

Biography

Rosa Parks: Mother of a Movement

This documentary traces the life of Rosa Parks from her childhood to the present day. Mrs. Parks' decision to take a stand against racial segregation changed the course of American history.

Curriculum Links: U.S. history, civics, civil rights studies, black history, women’s studies, personal development.

Vocabulary

• Brown v Board of Education
• Great Depression
• NAACP
• activist
• boycott
• desegregation
• integration
• lynch
• passive resistance
• seamstress
• segregation
• sharecroppers

Discussion Questions

1. Where did Rosa McCauley Parks grow up? What was her childhood like? Why was pride a dangerous thing for blacks? What influence did her childhood have on her future decisions?
2. Why was lynching on the rise in the 1920s? What effect did the Great Depression have on the black community?
3. What sort of job opportunities were available to black people in the South? Why didn't more black people speak out against inequality originally? What might happen to them if they did?
4. What is the NAACP? What role did it play in the early civil rights movement? How was Rosa involved?
5. How were black people supposed to get on and sit on the busses in Montgomery, Alabama? Why was the system designed that way? What other forms of restrictions did black people face in the South?
6. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white man. What happened then? What does it mean to say that she lit the match that started a bonfire.
7. What is a boycott? What effect did the bus boycott have on the city of Montgomery? What effect did it have on the lives of the black workers?
8. What role did Martin Luther King play in this historic event? Why were black churches important to the civil rights movement? How do we remember Martin Luther King today?
9. When Rosa Parks was asked about her refusal to give up her seat, she said she was tired. Of what was she tired? Why did she present the perfect test case to challenge segregation?
10. Why did Rosa and Raymond Parks move to Detroit, Michigan?
11. Describe Rosa Parks today. What are the characteristics or personality traits that enable her to be a civil rights hero?

Extended Activities

1. Draw a timeline from 1913, when Rosa Parks was born, to the present day. Chart events in the history of civil rights. Be prepared to explain why you chose those events.
2. Many people of different races have been active in the civil rights movement. Choose one individual, research his or her contribution to civil rights, and write an outline of your findings. Using your outline, tell your class how this individual helped bring about changes in American life.
3. Pretend it is 1955. Create a poster encouraging people to boycott the city busses in Montgomery, Alabama. Or write a journal about participating in the bus boycott.
4. Can you find the origin of the word boycott? What about the origin of the word lynch?
5. Outline Rosa Parks' legal case from the time she was arrested in 1955 to when the U. S. Supreme Court declared that segregation on public transportation was unconstitutional in 1956. Or choose another landmark civil rights case and outline the issues it represents.