“Rosa Parks” is inspired by the progress and setbacks experienced during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This movement fought for equality, freedom, and justice for Black Americans. An important goal of civil rights activists like Rosa Parks was to end legalized segregation in the United States by abolishing “Jim Crow” laws that prohibited Black people from entering white-only establishments. Civil rights activists also advocated for voting rights and protested state-sanctioned violence committed against Black Americans.

“Rosa Parks” the poem begins with a precursor to the civil rights movement—the creation of the first all-Black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), in 1925 (Lines 1-2). From there, the poem progresses to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed school segregation in the United States. Brown v. Board of Education was a crucial victory, but its implementation met with delays and resistance from school districts. In 1957, for example, President Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed the National Guard to integrate a high school in Little Rock, after the Governor of Arkansas refused.

On top of institutional resistance, racial progress was also met with violence from racist white Americans. “Rosa Parks” references a Gwendolyn Brooks poem about a lynching in Little Rock, Arkansas, that took place shortly after the decision in Brown v.