Rosa Parks Biography: A Lesson In Racism And Social Psychology

Discover the biography of Rosa Parks, the woman who sparked one of the most important protests during the period of the African American Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

She did this with a simple but very potent gesture. She refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. This little fact of Rosa Parks’ life can teach us a lot about racism and about Social Psychology.

She was, of course, arrested and imprisoned for this. This situation gave rise to what would later become known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Encouraged by Martin Luther King as an act of civil disobedience, these protests ended up abolishing the racial segregation laws in force until then.

The racial segregation law forced African Americans to occupy the back seats of public buses. The front seats were reserved for whites. In the middle of the bus there were some seats that could be used by everyone indiscriminately. These banks were always to be given away by African Americans to whites.

The result of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat was the kickoff that culminated in the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Who was Rosa Parks?

The daughter of a teacher and a carpenter, Rosa Parks lived during the era of racial segregation in the United States. She graduated from Alabama State Teachers College and married Raymond Parks.

Rosa’s childhood took place in a context in which racial segregation was very strong. It could be seen in public restrooms, schools, transport, restaurants, etc. Rosa had a strong memory of her grandfather, standing outside her house, with a shotgun as the Ku Klux Klan marched down the street.

She joined, along with her husband, the cause that championed the Scottsboro Boys. The Scottsboro boys were a group of black men wrongfully accused of raping a white woman.

She was also part of the NAACP, , or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in direct translation into Portuguese.

During her youth, Rosa worked at Maxwell Air Force Base. Maxwell was federally owned and did not allow for segregation. Rosa used to comment that the company had opened her eyes.

Racism and social psychology in Rosa Parks’ biography

Social Psychology explains that racism rests on the basis of the process of categorizing people. Characteristics are attributed to a certain group and this is done, in addition, from a supposed identification with another group that considers itself superior. There are three main concepts in the analysis of racial discrimination and prejudice:

• Social categorization. It is the main precursor of all forms of prejudice. It is actually a cognitive tool that helps to classify and order reality. This is done through two cognitive processes: assimilation and differentiation. These are two processes responsible for, respectively, minimizing or exaggerating differences between groups.
• The stereotype. It arises from social categorization.
• Social identification. The self-concept that a person creates of himself derived from an idea of ​​belonging to a certain group.

What drives a person to become a social activist?

Oppression and inequality are closely associated. The factors that influence people to join social activism are mainly the perception of injustice for belonging to a social group, inequality and social emotions.

Some psychosocial theories have tried to explain the phenomenon of Boycott of Montgomery buses, but it seems that emotions can provide the best explanation for this fact (Ruiz-Junco 2013 and Bosco 2007). Shared emotions of humiliation developed strongly in oppressed people, along with other emotions such as courage and determination.

A. Jasper, in a 2011 study, concluded that a person needs to feel both negative and positive emotions at the same time to become a social activist. Social activism does not exist if one feels only negative emotions. Emotions play an essential role in identity and social behavior.

Biography of Rosa Parks, a social activist

Rosa Parks explained many times that, on that fateful day, she refused to get up and give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger because she was “tired”. And it wasn’t just the physical fatigue of a day’s end back home. Rosa was tired of being treated like a second-class citizen.

I was tired of injustice and unequal treatment. Furthermore, courage and determination also motivated their social disobedience.

Rosa Parks worked the rest of her life in the fight for civil rights. She was the woman who taught us that the world can change in a day with a simple gesture.

On the day she died in 2005, all the buses in Montgomery circled with their front seats reserved with a black bow with a name: Rosa Parks.