Essay Sample about Rosa Parks

The law is the law you are under arrest. During the boycott that sparked after Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1st, 1955, a letter was written. The Montgomery bus boycott was a year-long protest that culminated in the United States, this boycott was a pivotal moment in the fight for civil rights. It helped remove the racial barriers of transportation. The United States Supreme Court accepted a lower court's judgment that bus segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment's due process and equal protection sections on November 13, 1956, resulting in the effective end of the bus boycott on December 20, 1956. What event led up to this traumatic event? Well, Rosa Parks was riding the bus in Montgomery and sat in the White section. She was asked to move and she did not budge. In her autobiography she wrote, People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired… but that isn’t true.

The source I chose to speak about was a letter written by Rosa Parks after she was arrested in 1955. It specifies how Rosa Parks has been treated poorly due to her race her whole life, and that she could not take the disrespect anymore. She asked the officer why they treated her this way and he stated that he did not know it was the law. This is what Whites do not understand. They had these feelings towards colored people and did not know why. Rosa Park’s wrote this letter for all of her friends and society to see, to show that colored people are only being treated terribly because of the law. 

The significance of this source is that it shows people in today's society that the white people back in the day were racist for no reason, a police officer could not give Rosa Parks a valid reason besides the law. The statement, the law is the law,  is one of the most important things written in Rosa Parks letter. It shows society that some police officers back then were not racist they just had to abide by the law they live under. Rosa Park’s circumstances shined through in the letter she wrote. Like I stated before she wrote about how she had always been pushed around because of her race, and she had enough of it. 

Yes, many people that lived in Montgomery who have seen this letter thought it was a biased opinion, but it was only because they were white and did not fully understand what it was like to live in a world where your skin color defined who you were as a person. Even though you are a human being, if you have any color in your skin you are automatically judged and looked down upon as a crime. I believe that Rosa Parks was an icon, other colored people looked up to her as an idol, which is what created the boycott in the first place. Along with the letter she wrote, the policeman’s statement of, the law is the law, really opened peoples eyes in town. Especially the colored people. It proved that Whites are treating colored people with disrespect because of the law, so indeed the law needed to be changed.

For example, the Brown v. Board of Education was a court case during the civil rights movement. In which established the precedent that "separate but equal" education and other services were in fact unequal. This court case was passed in 1954, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was ruled in 1956 and established that any law requiring racially segregated seating on buses violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.