Process Paper

We chose Rosa Parks for this project because we believe that she had an important role in the Civil Rights movement at a time when America needed her. Not only was Rosa Parks an influential African American, her being a woman at that time made a more significant impact to American history. Everyone has heard of Rosa Parks, but not everyone knows just how important she was to the history of the United States. Through this project we learned about how she truly jump started “Peaceful Protests” or “Boycotts”, which subsequent cultural influencers have adopted.

The most useful source for this project was Gale’s Academic Database. The majority of our primary sources regarding the day Rosa Parks stood up for what she believed in came from Gale. Gale provided information that was otherwise difficult to find. Another source that we utilized a great deal was Stanford Universities, The Martin Luther King Research and Education Institute. Through this source we found Martin Luther King’s perspective on how brave Rosa Parks was for standing up for what she believed in during a very difficult time.

Our Civics teacher, Aaron Hoffman provided examples of other activists that were inspired by Rosa Parks and what they did. Additionally, he informed us about the “Reconstruction Era” and the effect it had on the South. He also gave us a book called, EyeWitness to America by David Colbert. This book provided Rosa Parks’ insight and reaction to her arrest on December 1st, 1955.

What we found most difficult was navigating within the website platform. Not being able to move text boxes to the exact location we needed alongside with not being able to align text with images, was an unexpected challenge to the formatting of our website. Another issue with the platform was the lack of spellcheck and not being able to indent text, which proved to be a time-drain, causing us to seek other resources to make up for what the platform did not provide. Lastly, not being able to manually adjust the size of text boxes was frustrating and inconvenient.

This year's Contest Theme is all about Breaking Barriers. Rosa Parks fits this theme perfectly because of her significant impact on Civil Rights Movements and Desegregation. Rosa Parks was the stepping stone for both male and female African Americans to stand up for equality among races. America would be different had it not been for Rosa Parks and the people she inspired, putting all of their lives on the line to fight against segregation and the cultural tension created by it.