Most Significant Events
Casey Turner
HIS/135
11/20/2011

I am writing this paper to reveal and describe different events that have occured over the past 50 years that have had a direct impact on the United States and affected the way we all live today. There are many economical, social, and political events that have helped shaped not only our country, but many other nations around the world as well. This paper is an attempt to reveal and speculate on some of these important events.
1950’s
A growing amount of American people began to speak out about inequality and injustice during the 1950’s and the Rosa Parks bus incident is a perfect example. On December 1, 1955, a 42 year old African American woman who worked as a seamstress named Rosa Parks boarded a Montgomery, Alabama city bus to go home from work. On that bus that day, Rosa Parks started a new era in the American quest for equal rights (Rosa Parks Bus, 2002).
Parks sat toward the middle of the bus, right behind the 10 seats that were reserved for white people. The bus ended up getting completely filled up and when a white man that entered the bus did not have a seat, the driver tried to make the four blacks sitting just behind the white section give up their seats so that the white man could sit down. Mrs. Park’s who was already a NAACP activist, quietly refused to do so. For disobeying the bus driver’s orders and not giving up her seat to the white man, she was arrested and convicted of violating segregation laws, which were known as “Jim Crow laws”. Mrs. Parks ended up appealing the conviction and challenging the legality of segregation in our country, and triggered a boycott of the Montgomery, Alabama bus system. In cities all throughout the south, segregated bus companies were constant reminders of the inequities of American society. African Americans made up about 75 percent of riders in