Today the United States remembers civil rights icon, Rosa Parks, on Rosa Parks Day. The civil rights leader was arrested on Dec. 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her brave action that day helped spark national attention for the Montgomery Bus Boycott and furthered momentum of the civil rights movement taking hold in the South. It also would lead to an eventual Supreme Court ruling that bus segregation was unconstitutional. Rosa Parks Day was officially established for the first time in California in 2000. Read more about Rosa Parks and the ...
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Today is an important date in civil rights history. Eighty-nine African-Americans, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, voluntarily turned themselves in to authorities in Montgomery, Alabama, on Feb. 22, 1956, after being indicted under a 1921 law “prohibiting conspiracies that interfered with lawful business.” The statute, designed to break trade union action, outlawed boycotts against businesses without “just cause.” UAW President Walter Reuther was an avid supporter of civil rights at a time when people didn’t always speak out in support. Reuther was later a friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the UAW supported the movement in ...
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