NW Illinois News

State Representative Bradley Fritts acknowledged the acts of Rosa Parks in a December 1 Facebook post, stating, "Her act of courage ignited a wave of activism for justice, equality, and freedom for all Americans."

"On Rosa Parks Day, we honor and celebrate the legacy of civil rights leader Rosa Parks," said Fritts, according to Facebook. "On December 1st, 1955, Rosa Parks bravely refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her act of courage ignited a wave of activism for justice, equality, and freedom for all Americans."

According to History.com, on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, then 42 years old, rode a municipal bus from her workplace to her home. Municipal buses in Montgomery required Black riders to sit in the back. After her workday at the Montgomery Fair department store, Parks was tired. When a white man was without a seat because all seats in the "white" section were taken, riders in the first row of the "colored" section were told to stand. Parks was one of those riders and the only one of the four to refuse to stand up.

Screenshot of State Rep. Bradley Fritts' Dec. 1 Facebook post | State Representative Bradley Fritts' Facebook page

The website quoted Parks’ autobiography: "People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically… No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in," Parks wrote.

The National Archives has an educator resources section that includes a lesson on the arrest records of Rosa Parks. This lesson explains that when she was arrested, Parks was booked, fingerprinted and briefly incarcerated for "refusing to obey orders of bus driver." She was convicted and her lawyer appealed. As her appeal moved through the courts, a panel of three judges in the U.S. District Court for the region ruled in another case that racial segregation of public buses was unconstitutional. That case, Browder v. Gayle, was decided on June 4, 1956. The ruling by a three-judge panel including Frank M. Johnson Jr., was upheld by the United States Supreme Court on November 13, 1956.

Fritts is the State Representative for District 74 and took office in January 2023. He is a lifelong resident of Illinois and when he’s not in Springfield, he works as a substitute teacher and farms with his family. He holds a bachelor’s degree in agricultural and consumer economics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.