Has Martin Luther King Jr met Rosa Parks and are they alike?

Answer 1

In 1943, Rosa Parks joined the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in Montgomery Alabama. In that organization and a number of organizations and people she became associated with, Rosa learned how all encompassing the lives of black Americans were the effects of segregation and discrimination. By the time she was arrested on the Montgomery bus on December 5, 1955, she had learned that many people, like herself, were trying to find ways of overcoming the discrimination.

On the night of Rosa's arrest, a group of people, including local civil rights leader, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, met to discuss holding a boycott of the Montgomery buses. Rosa did not attend, she spent that night in jail. They decided to form a group to organize and support a boycott, which they called the 'Montgomery Improvement Association'. They decided on the Reverend Marting Luther King, Jr., a local minister and newcomer to Montgomery to head that organization. If Rosa had met Dr. King prior to this meeting is unknown, but when she was released from jail and the boycott got under way, she surly met him then. Suffice it to say, they met in 1955.

With the exception of being black Americans living under segregation and the discrimination of their time, and their dedication to their cause, they had very little in common.

King was a college educated man who came from an educated family and was married to a college graduate. He had a profession that gave him prestige, enough to be selected to lead the Montgomery boycott. He was an excellent speaker and a charismatic leader. King supported himself and his family by working full time for the civil rights movement.

Rosa was a simple woman, small, shy and soft spoken. She had little prestige as a woman of her time and worked as a housekeeper and seamstress. She tells that she became the secretary for her chapter of the NAACP because she was the only woman. Throughout her years in support of the Civil Rights Movement she also had to work at whatever jobs she could find, which was difficult due to her notoriety. When she retired, she was a widow and was able to devote more time to the civil rights movement.