Why did Rosa Parks go to jail?

Answer 1

Rosa Parks was jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a local bus to a white man in the Segregationist American South of the 1950s. On the first day of December 1955, Rosa Parks (then a young woman of 42) was seated in the front section of a bus travelling through Montgomery, the State capital of Alabama, when a white passenger got on. In those days, the front half of bus seating was reserved for white passengers, with black travellers relegated to the rear of the vehicle. The driver, James Blake, ordered Rosa to move to the back to make room for the new, white arrival- she refused. Blake became increasingly threatening, using racist language against her, but still Rosa would not budge. Eventually, Blake called the police, who arrested and prosecuted her- she was tried, and given a prison sentence. This occurance served as a focus for the US Civil Rights Movement, involving prominent civil leaders such as Martin Luther King in organising the Bus Boycott, where black commuters (along with white sympathisers) refused to use the bus service until segregated seating was abolished. Although Rosa Parks was not the first black person to refuse to co-operate with racist laws, her case in particular aroused nationwide outrage across the USA. The Bus Boycott was a success, and led to the scrapping of segregated seating on all forms of public transport across America. The sad irony is, that the white passenger for whom Rosa was ordered to move did not wish her particularly to move on his behalf, and subsequently gave his support to the Bus Boycott!!

Answer 2

because she sat in the front of the bus when she was supposed to sit in the back because black people sit in the back and white people sit in the front