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Rosa Parks
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Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama to James McCauley and Leona McCauley. At the age of 2, Rosa Parks, her brother, and her mother moved to Pine Level, Alabama to live with her grandparents. At the age of 11, she began attending the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, which was funded by liberal northern women. She later began attending Alabama State Teachers College.
Upon completion, she moved with her husband, Raymond Parks, to Montgomery. The Parks joined the local chapter of the NAACP. She acted as the secretary from 1943 to 1956. She also worked to help improve conditions for African Americans. She worked on cases involving such issues as, flogging, peonage, rape, and murder.
On December 1, 1955, 43 year old Rosa Parks boarded a Montgomery, Alabama city bus after finishing work as a tailor's assistant at the Montgomery Fair department store. As all black patrons were required to do, she paid her fare at the front of the bus and then re-boarded in the rear. She sat in a vacant seat in the back next to a man and across the aisle from 2 women.
After a few stops, the seats in the front of the bus became full and a white man who had boarded, stood in the aisle. The bus driver asked Ms. Rosa Parks, the man next to her, and the 2 women to let the white man have their seats. As the others moved, Ms. Rosa Parks remained in her seat.
She was arrested with several others who violated segregation laws. Parks lost her seamstress job. Parks' refusal to give up her seat led to a boycott of buses by blacks on Dec. 5, 1955, a tactic organized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. On that cold and cloudy morning, onlookers watched as the buses drove by with few blacks passengers onboard. The boycott had been a success. The boycott continued for 381 days. Which ended after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed that all segregation was unlawful on Dec. 20, 1956.
In June of 1956, the U.S. District Court ruled in favor of the Montgomery Improvement Association. The city appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court. In mid-November, the Supreme Court affirmed the lower courts ruling, and declared that segregation on buses was unconstitutional. Implementation of the Court's decision took place on December 20, 1956.
Parks and her husband moved to Detroit in 1957, where she later served on staff for United States Representative, John Conyers from 1965 to 1988.
In 1979, Rosa Parks won the Spingarn Medal for her civil rights work. Also, in her honor, the Southern Christian Leadership Council established the annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award. In 1987, she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development to help young people. In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and in 1999 she received the Congressional Gold Medal.
Parks died of natural causes at her home in Detroit on October 24, 2005.
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