Rosa Parks Interview

What people inspired you as a child?

Rosa Parks: My family, I would say, my mother, and my maternal grandparents. I grew up with them.

My mother was a teacher in a little school, and she believed in freedom and equality for people, and did not have the notion that we were supposed to live as we did, under legally enforced racial segregation. She didn't believe in it.
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How did she impart that to you?

Rosa Parks: Just by her attitude and the way she talked. We were human beings and we should be treated as such.

She instilled that feeling in you.

Rosa Parks: It was just the way I grew up. Yes, she did. Of course, my grandfather had the same ideas, as well as my grandmother.

What was their background?

Rosa Parks: Both of them were born before the emancipation, before slavery ended. And they suffered a lot, as children they were in slavery and of course, after slavery was not that much better, but I guess it was some better. They were farmers in a rural area in Alabama.

They must have suffered.

Rosa Parks: Yes, especially my grandfather.

Was there a teacher that influenced you?

Rosa Parks: My mother was a teacher and I went to the same school where she was teaching. My very first teacher was Miss Sally Hill, and I liked her very much. In fact, I liked school when I was very young, in spite of the fact that it was a one-room school for students all ages, from the very young to teens, as long as they went to school. It was only a short term for us, five months every year, instead of the regular nine months every year.

You still flourished in this school, despite all that.

Rosa Parks: I liked to read books anyway, and my mother taught me to read even before I began school.

What books did you like to read?

Rosa Parks: Mostly the little stories that they had in the school books, and fairy tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood, and those stories, just what they had for young children.

Do you think reading is important?

Rosa Parks: Yes, it's very important. And I always liked to read, especially historic books. I still do like to read.

What was it like in Montgomery when you were growing up?

Rosa Parks: Back in Montgomery during my growing up there, it was completely legally enforced racial segregation, and of course, I struggled against it for a long time. I felt that it was not right to be deprived of freedom when we were living in the Home of the Brave and Land of the Free. Of course, when I refused to stand up, on the orders of the bus driver, for a white passenger to take the seat, and I was not sitting in the front of the bus, as so many people have said, and neither was my feet hurting, as many people have said. But I made up my mind that I would not give in any longer to legally-imposed racial segregation and of course my arrest brought about the protests for more than a year. And in doing so, Dr. Martin Luther King became prominent because he was the leader of our protests along with many other people. And I'm very glad that this experience I had then brought about a movement that triggered across the United States and in other places.
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