Rosa Parks Questions

"I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."  --MLK Jr.

1. What is your reaction to Dr. King's quote?  How is it possible to break a law yet still have the "highest respect for the law?"

2. What is an activist?  What words come to mind when you think about an activist?  Who are some famous activists?  Did they practice good citizenship?

3. What was life like for African Americans in the south when Rosa Parks was a child?

4. How was Mrs. Parks "raised a little different"?

5. What happened when Mrs. Parks first encountered bus driver James Blake in 1943?  What did she do when he told her to get off the bus and re-enter through the side door? How do you think this episode influenced her actions more than 10 years later?

6. What qualities did the newly hired minister Martin Luther King Jr. bring to the boycott?

7. What economic effects did the boycott have on the city?  How did many white people in Montgomery react to the boycott? Why did some whites help with the boycott?  How did the Supreme Court rule on Montgomery's bus segregation laws?

8. How would things have been different for Rosa Parks if no one else in the community had done anything?

9. What will you take away from Rosa Parks's story in your own life?

10. What will you do differently in your life from now on?