Biography Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks, born Rosa Mccauley, was born on February 4, 1913, to James McCauley, a carpenter and stonemason, and Leona Ewards, a schoolteacher in the deep south of Tuskegee, Alabama. Park's parents divorced when she was two years old; Parks moved with her mother to Pine Level, Alabama. Rosa Parks saw her father once more before she reached her adulthood life. Her mother encouraged Rosa Parks to pursue her education, eventually receiving her High School Diploma. At the age of nineteen, Parks met and married Raymond Parks, who encouraged her to continue her education and introduced her to civil rights activism. She went to meetings with her husband compiling defense for the Scottsboro boys. She joined the NAACP in 1943, becoming a secretary at her first meeting, and began to work on a voter registration drive plan to desegregate transportation. Parks noted the contrast each day as she rode home on the segregated city bus. Like other black riders, she often experienced humiliation and disgust at Jim Crow segregation in transportation and other areas of southern life. Rosa Parks is known for her rebellion acts on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This moment in history helped to set the stage for a powerful movement that had already begun rolling, the civil rights movement. However significant this single act was, it was just that, one single act—Rosa Park's decision to remain sitting on the bus on December 1, 1955. Her legendary ride home in 1955 on the bus became the culmination of her work thus far. She had enough. Rosa Parks did not give up her seat in the middle of the bus, even as the driver called the police. Park's arrest spurred a movement among the black community to boycott all public transportation. The boycott, a cry sent up to the government, challenging the constitutionality of segregation on public transportation. During this year-long battle, Rosa, as well as many others in the boycott, had lost their jobs. She spent her time collecting food and clothing for those in need. After their success, Rosa and her husband moved to Detroit, where she continued to be active in the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks, for a good reason, was known as "mother of the civil rights movement." Parks has been an activist for most of her life, and she never let the courts, laws, or anyone deters her from working towards racial equality. In June of 1956, activists won a victory in federal district court when a three-judge panel ruled that intrastate bus segregation was unconstitutional. Rosa Parks continued her activism, including participation in the 1963 march in Washington and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, events closely identified with the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Parks focused on local politics as well. Although Rosa Park's husband died in the year of 1977, she continued her marches and work of the civil rights movement. She co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Park Institute for Self Development in 1987 to inspire and guide youth to lead socially responsible lives. Parks lived ninety-two years, allowing her to see the immense progress that came from the movement that she helped to fuel. Rosa Park has paved the way for many African Americans.