(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
I'm Pat Bodnar. And I'm Steve Ember with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English. Today, we tell about Rosa Parks, who has been called the mother of the American civil rights movement.
Rosa Parks
Until the nineteen sixties, black people in many parts of the United States did not have the same civil rights as white people. Laws in the American South kept the two races separate. These laws forced black people to attend separate schools, live in separate areas of a city and sit in separate areas on a bus.
On December first, nineteen fifty-five, in the southern city of Montgomery, Alabama, a forty-two year old black woman got on a city bus. The law at that time required black people seated in one area of the bus to give up their seats to white people who wanted them. The woman refused to do this and was arrested.
This act of peaceful disobedience started protests in Montgomery that led to legal changes in minority rights in the United States. The woman who started it was Rosa Parks. Today, we tell her story.
She was born Rosa Louise McCauley in nineteen-thirteen in Tuskegee, Alabama. She attended local schools until she was eleven years old. Then she was sent to school in Montgomery. She left high school early to care for her sick grandmother, then to care for her mother. She did not finish high school until she was twenty-one.
Rosa married Raymond Parks in nineteen thirty-two. He was a barber who cut men's hair. He was also a civil rights activist. Together, they worked for the local group of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In nineteen forty-three, Missus Parks became an officer in the group and later its youth leader.
Rosa Parks was a seamstress in Montgomery. She worked sewing clothes from the nineteen thirties until nineteen fifty-five. Then she became a representation of freedom for millions of African-Americans.
In much of the American South in the nineteen fifties, the first rows of seats on city buses were for white people only. Black people sat in the back of the bus. Both groups could sit in a middle area. However, black people sitting in that part of the bus were expected to leave their seats if a white person wanted to sit there.
Rosa Parks and three other black people were seated in the middle area of the bus when a white person got on the bus and wanted a seat. The bus driver demanded that all four black people leave their seats so the white person would not have to sit next to any of them. The three other blacks got up, but Missus Parks refused. She was arrested.
Some popular stories about that incident include the statement that Rosa Parks refused to leave her seat because her feet were tired. But she herself said in later years that this was false. What she was really tired of, she said, was accepting unequal treatment. She explained later that this seemed to be the place for her to stop being pushed around and to find out what human rights she had, if any.
A group of black activist women in Montgomery was known as the Women's Political Council. The group was working to oppose the mistreatment of black bus passengers. Blacks had been arrested and even killed for violating orders from bus drivers. Rosa Parks was not the first black person to refuse to give up a seat on the bus for a white person. But black groups in Montgomery considered her to be the right citizen around whom to build a protest because she was one of the finest citizens of the city.
The women's group immediately called for all blacks in the city to refuse to ride on city buses on the day of Missus Parks's trial, Monday, December fifth. The result was that forty thousand people walked and used other transportation on that day.
That night, at meetings throughout the city, blacks in Montgomery agreed to continue to boycott the city buses until their mistreatment stopped.
They also demanded that the city hire black bus drivers and that anyone be permitted to sit in the middle of the bus and not have to get up for anyone else.
The Montgomery bus boycott continued for three hundred eighty-one days. It was led by local black leader E.D. Nixon and a young black minister, Martin Luther King, Junior. Similar protests were held in other southern cities. Finally, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on Missus Parks's case. It made racial separation illegal on city buses. That decision came on November thirteenth, nineteen fifty-six, almost a year after Missus Parks's arrest. The boycott in Montgomery ended the day after the court order arrived, December twentieth.
Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Junior had started a movement of non-violent protest in the South. That movement changed civil rights in the United States forever. Martin Luther King became its famous spokesman, but he did not live to see many of the results of his work. Rosa Parks did.
Life became increasingly difficult for Rosa Parks and her family after the bus boycott.
She was dismissed from her job and could not find another. So the Parks family left Montgomery. They moved first to Virginia, then to Detroit, Michigan. Missus Parks worked as a seamstress until nineteen sixty-five. Then, Michigan Representative John Conyers gave her a job working in his congressional office in Detroit. She retired from that job in nineteen eighty-eight.
Through the years, Rosa Parks continued to work for the NAACP and appeared at civil rights events. She was a quiet woman and often seemed uneasy with her fame. But she said that she wanted to help people, especially young people, to make useful lives for themselves and to help others. In nineteen eighty-seven, she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development to improve the lives of black children.
Rosa Parks received two of the nation's highest honors for her civil rights activism. In nineteen ninety-six, President Clinton honored her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And in nineteen ninety-nine, she received the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor.
In her later years, Rosa Parks was often asked how much relations between the races had improved since the civil rights laws were passed in the nineteen sixties. She thought there was still a long way to go. Yet she remained the face of the movement for racial equality in the United States.
Rosa Parks died on October twenty-fourth, two thousand five. She was ninety-two years old. Her body lay in honor in the United States Capitol building in Washington. She was the first American woman to be so honored. Thirty thousand people walked silently past her body to show their respect.
Representative Conyers spoke about what this woman of quiet strength meant to the nation. He said: "There are very few people who can say their actions and conduct changed the face of the nation. Rosa Parks is one of those individuals."
Rosa Parks meant a lot to many Americans. Four thousand people attended her funeral in Detroit, Michigan. Among them were former President Bill Clinton, his wife Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
President Clinton spoke about remembering the separation of the races on buses in the South when he was a boy. He said that Rosa Parks helped to set all Americans free. He said the world knows of her because of a single act of bravery that struck a deadly blow to racial hatred.
Earlier, the religious official of the United States Senate spoke about her at a memorial service in Washington. He said Rosa Parks's bravery serves as an example of the power of small acts. And the Reverend Jesse Jackson commented in a statement about what her small act of bravery meant for African-American people. He said that on that bus in nineteen fifty-five, "She sat down in order that we might stand up... and she opened the doors on the long journey to freedom."
重点解析
1.disobedience 违抗
A single act of rebellion or disobedience was often enough to seal a woman's fate.
仅一次反抗或不服从的行为在以前就往往足以决定一个女人的命运。
2.seamstress 女裁缝
Ana María does not want to be a seamstress like her mother but rather a schoolteacher.
安娜玛利亚并不想像妈妈一样做一名裁缝，她想成为一名教师。
3.demand 要求
Human rights groups are demanding an investigation into the shooting.
人权组织正强烈要求对这一枪击案进行调查。
4.What she was really tired of, she said, was accepting unequal treatment.
treatment对待
We don't want any special treatment.
我们不需要任何特殊待遇。
5.The group was working to oppose the mistreatment of black bus passengers.
mistreatment虐待
...issues like police brutality and mistreatment of people in prisons.
...类似警察施暴和囚犯受虐的问题。
6.It made racial separation illegal on city buses.
racial separation 种族隔离
Yet he had strongly defended racial separation for most of his political life.
但是在他大部分的政治生活中，他都极力为种族分离辩护。
参考译文
我是帕特·博德纳。我是史蒂夫·恩贝尔。这里是VOA慢速英语栏目《美国人物志》。今天我们要讲述的是罗莎·帕克斯的故事。她被称为美国公民权利运动之母。
直到1960年达，美国许多地方的黑人都无法享有与白人相同的公民权。美国南部法律一直将两个种族分离开来。这些法律迫使黑人进入单独的学校、生活在城市单独的区域、坐在公交单独的位子。1955年12月1日，在阿拉巴马州蒙哥马利南部城市，一名42岁的黑人女性搭上了公交车。那时的法律要求黑人坐在公交车的一个区域，给那些要坐下的白人让座。这名女性因拒绝让座而被捕。这个平静的反抗引发了蒙哥马利的反抗，促成美国少数群体权利的合法改变。引发这一切的女性叫做罗莎·帕克斯。今天我们就要讲述她的故事。
1913年，她出生于阿拉巴马州塔斯基吉，出生时，她的名字是罗莎·路易丝·麦考利。直到11岁，她才上了一所当地学校。然后她又去蒙哥马利上学。因为要照顾生病的祖母，之后是照顾她的母亲，她早早离校。直到21岁，她才上完高中。1932年，罗莎嫁给雷蒙德·帕克斯。他是一名理发师，也是一名民权积极分子。它们共同为美国全国有色人种协进会的当地团体工作。1943年，帕克斯太太成为该组织中的一名官员，之后又成为其青年领导者。罗莎·帕克斯是蒙哥马利的一名女裁缝。从1930年代至1955年，她一直从事此工作。之后，他成为了数万名非裔美国人的自由代表。
1950年代，在美国南部多数地方，公交车上的第一排作为只有白人能坐。黑人只能坐在后座。中间区域两方都能做。但是，如果白人想坐，中间位置的黑人就要让座。罗莎·帕克斯和其他三名黑人正好坐在中间，一名白人上车并要求他们让座。司机要求这是个黑人让座，这样白人就不必坐在黑人旁边。其他三名黑人站了起来，但是帕克斯太太拒绝让座。她被捕了。
一些关于此事件的故事中称，罗莎·帕克斯拒绝让座是因为她腿累。但多年后，她本人表示这种说法是错误的。真正让她感到疲惫的是接受这些不平等的对待。她之后解释道，这似乎是她摆脱任人摆布并寻找自己权利（如果有的话）的一次时机。
在蒙哥马利有一个黑人妇女活动组织—妇女政治委员会。该组织的工作室反对黑人公车乘客虐待。很多黑人因违反公交车司机的命令而被捕甚至被杀害。罗莎·帕克斯并不是第一个拒绝给白人让座的黑人。但是蒙哥马利的黑人团体认为她是那个建立反抗的正确人选，因为她是这个城市精英市民之一。该女性团体立即呼吁城市中的黑人在帕克斯太太接受审判的那天（12月15日，周一）拒绝乘坐城市公交车。结果，那一天四万市民选择步行或其他交通工具。那晚，全城举行集会，蒙哥马利的黑人同意继续抵制公交车，知道他们停止施虐。他们还要求城市雇用黑人公车司机并允许每个人坐在中间座位且不需要为任何人让座。
蒙哥马利公交车抵制持续了381天。该运动领袖为当地黑人E·D·尼克松以及一名年轻的黑人部长马丁·路德·金。其他南部城市也进行了类似抗议。最终，美国高级法庭对帕克斯太太的案件进行裁决—城市公交种族隔离属违法行为。这个决定于1956年12月13日开始试试，此时距离帕克斯太太被捕近一年时间。12月20日，该裁决宣判后，蒙哥马利抵制活动结束。罗莎·帕克斯和马丁·路德·金在南部开始了非暴力抗议运动。该运动永远改变了美国民权。马丁·路德·金成为该运动著名发言人，但是他没有活着看到他所成就的一切。罗莎·帕克斯却看到了。
公车抵制运动后，罗莎·帕克斯和家人的生活越来越困难。她被解雇，找不到工作。因此帕克斯一家离开了蒙哥马利。他们首先搬到了弗吉尼亚州，然后搬到底特律、密歇根。一直到1965年，帕克斯太太的工作都是裁缝。然后，密歇根众议员约翰·科尼尔斯给了她一份工作—在他位于底特律的国会办公室工作。1988年，她从那退休。这些年来，罗莎·帕克斯继续为全国有色人种协进会工作并现身民权活动中。
她是一位安静的女性，命运却不安稳。但是她说他希望帮助人们，尤其是年轻人，为他们追去有用的人生，再去帮助其他人。1987年，她成立罗莎-雷蒙德.帕克斯自我发展协会，帮助改善黑人儿童的生活。因她的民权行动主义，罗莎·帕克斯收到了两项国家最高荣誉。1996年，克林顿总统授予她总统自由勋章。1999年，她被授予国会金质奖章。晚年，罗莎·帕克斯常被问到，1960年代，民权法通过后，种族关系得到了多少改变。她认为还有很长的路要走。但她仍是美国种族平等运动的代言人。罗莎·帕克斯死于2005年10月24日，享年92岁。她的遗体被安放在华盛顿美国国会大厦。她是享此殊荣的第一位美国女性。三万人静静地像她的遗体告别，对她表以尊重。众议员科尼尔斯谈及这位女性安静力量对这个国家意义。他说：“很少有人敢说自己的行为和行为改变了这个国家的面貌，罗莎·帕克斯就是其中之一。”
对于众多美国人而言，罗莎·帕克斯意义重大。四千人参加了她位于密歇根，底特律的葬礼。其中有前总统比尔·克林顿、他的妻子参议员希拉里·克林顿、教士杰西·杰克逊以及伊斯兰民族组织领导人路易斯·法拉堪。克林顿总统回忆起那场发生在南部的种族隔离运动，那时他还是个小孩子。他说罗莎·帕克斯帮助解放了所有美国人。他说她的这个勇敢举动让全世界都认识了她，她的这个举动给种族仇恨以致命的一击。早前，美国参议院宗教官员在华盛顿的追悼会上说起她。他说罗莎·帕克斯的勇敢是小举动带来大力量的证明。教士杰西·杰克逊在一份声明中就她勇敢小举动对非裔美国人的意义做出评价。他说，1955年，在那辆公交车上，“她为了让我们能够站起来而坐下...在这场漫长的路途中，她开启了自由之门。”
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