The Fight for the equal rights

Rosa Parks was tired. She’d had a long day at work as a seamstress, making clothes, and all she
wanted to do was sit down and rest her aching feet. So she took a seat on the bus but very soon
the bus driver on the way home ordered her to get up. The driver wanted to give her seat to a
white man who had just gotten on the bus. Parks was black, and black people were expected by
law to move to the back of the bus or even stand up so that white people could sit.
On that particular day, December 1, 1955, Parks decided she’d had enough. She refused to give
up her seat, and the police in Montgomery, Alabama, arrested her for it! Parks did not start the
civil rights movement. But her arrest played an important role in the struggle for equal black
rights in the United States.
Before the civil rights movement, black people were often not treated fairly in the United States.
A system of segregation kept white and black people apart in many Southern states. Under
segregation, blacks and whites had to use separate public facilities, such as schools, hospitals,
and restrooms. Black youths were not allowed to attend universities or schools where there were
whites. Discrimination was almost everywhere. But now, many years later after the black
woman's courage against the segregation and the struggles that followed, the US has had its first
black president, Barak Obama.

1. What was Rosa Parks?

2. Why did she want to sit down?
3. Why did the bus driver order her to stand up?
4. What did Rosa Park do and what happened to her?
5. How does Rosa Parks refusal to the unfair law matter in the history of US?
6. How were black people treated in the US before the civil right movements?
7. In which parts of the US were the discrimination worse?
8. Why do you think the black people in the US got equal rights later?