Rosa Parks (1913-2005)

This activity can be used during a unit on the Civil Rights movement, in teaching about protests and civil disobedience, or when focusing on Rosa Parks individually. Grades 5-8.

TEKS: 5th Social Studies.
113.16.b.5.C. The student understands important issues, events, and individuals in the US during the 20th and 21st centuries. The student is expected to identify accomplishments of individuals and groups such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr…who have made contributions to society in the areas of Civil Rights, women’s rights, military actions, and politics.
Title-Diagram of the Bus Showing Where Rosa Parks Was Seated

Author– National Archives Experience/Docs Teach. http://docsteach.org/activities/3616/detail
Summary
This diagram shows where Rosa Parks was seated on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus on December 1, 1955. At that time, the front 10 seats of the Montgomery city buses were permanently reserved for white passengers. Parks was seated in the first row behind those 10 seats. When the bus became crowded, the bus driver instructed Parks and the other three passengers seated in that row, all African Americans, to vacate their seats for the white passengers boarding. Eventually, three of the passengers moved, while Parks remained seated. When Parks disobeyed the bus driver’s request to move, he called the police.
Her arrest became a rallying point around which the African American community organized a bus boycott in protest of the discrimination they had endured for years. Martin Luther King, Jr., the 26-year-old minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, emerged as a leader during the well-coordinated, peaceful boycott that lasted 381 days and captured the world’s attention. It was during the boycott that Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., first achieved national fame as the public became acquainted with his powerful oratory.
This diagram shows where Rosa Parks was sitting when she refused to give up her seat. It was an exhibit in the Browder v. Gayle court case which challenged Montgomery and Alabama laws requiring segregated seating on buses. On June 5, 1956, a Federal three-judge panel ruled that such laws violated the 14th Amendment. Later that year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision.
Synopsis of Lesson & Strategies

In this activity, students will examine a diagram of the bus in which Rosa Parks took a seat. Ms. Parks’ name has been blacked out. Students will analyze and evaluate the document, then apply prior knowledge to discern what this document is and why it is important.
The instructional strategy of Turn & Talk with a partner could be used to decipher the image, based on student’s prior knowledge about the civil rights movement. I chose this strategy because it would be great way to make connections and infer meaning from text. The teacher could ask students to: “Look carefully at this document. Its part of a famous story, but an important clue has been blacked out. Use every bit of information contained here to describe what you see. Then, apply your knowledge of history to figure out what this document is and whom the story is about.”
As an extension of this lesson, students could use a WTL activity by inferring or imagining themselves as Rosa Parks and write about what they might have been thinking during the conflict and how they might have felt.
Companion Book
Parks, Rosa. Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue with Today’s Youth.
In this collection of children’s letters and her responses, Rosa Parks shares her legacy of courage and wisdom, reminding young readers that their actions will determine the future. Dear Mrs. Parks is a moving commentary on our times, full of hope for the future.