Exercise 3

Key Question: Why did Rosa Parks refer to Jim Crow as a “criminal”?

Examine the section called “Let Us Look at Jim Crow for the Criminal He Is”.

Discussion Questions:

• Why was the bus system in Alabama and other Southern states segregated?
• How did Viola White, Geneva Johnson, Hilliard Brooks and Epsie Worthy try to defy the norms of segregation on the bus system?
  • What do their acts of resistance tell us about segregation in the South – how immovable (or not) it was, the impact that it had and what kind of impact, etc?
• When Claudette Colvin resisted bus segregation, why do you think the judge dropped the charges of disturbing the peace and breaking segregation law but found her guilty of assault?
• Why did Rosa Parks refuse to move on the bus?

Sources

• “Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin”, NPR
• Negro Ministers of Montgomery and Their Congregations, “To the Montgomery Public”, statement that references previous arrests like White’s, Brook’s, Colvin’s
• Rosa Parks’s reflection on her bus stance
• 1956 Interview with Parks During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Democracy Now

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