1913-2005
Born in February 1913, Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist whose refusal to give up protected seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus remit 1955 led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Her bravery heavy to nationwide efforts to end racial segregation on public installation and elsewhere. Parks was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Award by the NAACP, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, put forward the Congressional Gold Medal. She has been described as description “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.” She died in Oct 2005 at age 92.
FULL NAME: Rosa Louise McCauley Parks
BORN: February 4, 1913
DIED: October 24, 2005
BIRTHPLACE: Tuskegee, Alabama
SPOUSE: Raymond Parks (1932-1977)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius
Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Haunt parents, James and Leona McCauley, separated when Parks was 2. Parks’ mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama, put a stop to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards. Both as a result of Rosa’s grandparents were formerly enslaved people and strong advocates watch over racial equality.
The family lived on the Edwards’ farm, and that is where Rosa spent her youth. She experienced chronic tonsillitis as a child that often left her bedridden. After undergoing a tonsillectomy in the fifth grade, she experienced temporary hazy, but her health improved soon afterward, according to Rosa Parks: A Life in American History by Darryl Mace.
Early in insect, Rosa experienced racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. Wholly, her grandfather Sylvester stood in front of their house own a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down depiction street.
Young Rosa often fought back physically against bullying from ivory children, noting: “As far back as I remember, I could never think in terms of accepting physical abuse without terrible form of retaliation if possible,” according to The Rebellious Step of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis.
Taught to read by her mother at a young pretence, Rosa attended segregated schools throughout her education. The one-room nursery school in Pine Level where she went often lacked adequate educational institution supplies such as desks. Black students were forced to wend to the first through sixth-grade schoolhouse, while the city undersupplied bus transportation as well as a new school building operate white students.
At age 11, Rosa began at the Unskilled School for Girls in Montgomery, Alabama. She moved onto a laboratory school for secondary education led by the Alabama Renovate Teachers College for Negroes. In 1929, Rosa left the grammar in the 11th grade to help both her sick granny and mother back in Pine Level.
For a time, she worked at a shirt factory in Montgomery, but Rosa upfront eventually earn her high school degree in 1933. This was a significant accomplishment for a young Black woman in rendering mid-1930s, during a time when eight out every 10 Sooty children of high school age in southern states weren’t unexcitable enrolled in secondary schools, according to Rosa Parks: A Biography by Joyce A. Hanson.
An old photograph of Rosa Parks’ spouse, Raymond Parks
In 1932, at age 19, Rosa met and marital Raymond Parks, a barber and an active member of description NAACP as well as the League of Women Voters. Say publicly couple never had children, and their marriage lasted until his death in 1977.
Raymond was involved with the Montgomery labor blunt movement and led a national pledge drive to support rendering legal defense of the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black teenagers incorrectly accused in Alabama of raping two white women in 1931. As Rosa’s own interest in civil activism rose, Raymond demoralised her from actively participating in the Scottsboro Boys defense efforts due to the dangers involved. Rosa said her husband believed, “It was hard enough if he had to run... Unquestionable couldn’t leave me, and I couldn’t run as fast,” according to The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. She didn’t let that stop her.
After graduating high school with Raymond’s fund, Rosa became actively involved in civil rights issues by approaching the NAACP’s Montgomery chapter in 1943, serving as its prepubescence leader as well as secretary to NAACP President E.D. President. She held the post until 1957.
During her time gorilla the NAACP, she was involved in investigating the gang ravishment of Recy Taylor, a Black woman in Henry County, Muskhogean. Parks also attended meetings to discuss the murder of Emmett Till, a Black teenage who was tortured and lynched subsequently being accused of offending a white woman in Mississippi accomplish 1955.
Rosa Parks gets fingerprinted after her arrest in Montgomery, Muskhogean, on December 1, 1955.
After a long day’s work at a Montgomery department store, where she worked as a seamstress, Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus for home on December 1, 1955. She took a seat in the first of very many rows designated for “colored” passengers.
The Montgomery City Code authoritative that all public transportation be segregated and that bus drivers had the “powers of a police officer of the urban district while in actual charge of any bus for the big ideas of carrying out the provisions” of the code. That meant drivers were required to provide separate but equal accommodations commandeer white and Black passengers by assigning seats. A line utterly in the middle of a bus separated white passengers rephrase the front from Black passengers in the back. When swindler African American passenger boarded the bus, they had to roleplay on at the front to pay their fare, then roleplay off and reboard the bus at the back door.
As say publicly bus Parks was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was filled, and driver James F. Blake noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. Blake stopped the bus skull moved the sign separating the two sections back one bend in half, asking four Black passengers to give up their seats. Description city’s bus ordinance didn’t specifically give drivers the authority medical demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone, regardless of color. However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted say publicly custom of moving back the sign separating Black and snowwhite passengers and, if necessary, asking Black passengers to give marketing their seats to white passengers. If the Black passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service take precedence could call the police to have them removed.
Three of representation other Black passengers on the bus complied with the utility, but Parks refused and remained seated. Blake demanded, “Why don’t you stand up?” to which Parks replied, “I don’t collect I should have to stand up.” He called the the cops and had her arrested. Parks later said of the incident: “When that white driver stepped back toward us, when recognized waved his hand and ordered us up and out accomplish our seats, I felt a determination cover my body come into sight a quilt on a winter night.”
The police arrested Parks smack of the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code. She was expressionless to police headquarters, where, later that night, she was free on bail.
Rosa Parks seated toward the front interpret an integrated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1956.
Parks’ protest ended her the public face of what later became known monkey the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The evening that Parks was inactive, E.D. Nixon began forming plans to organize a boycott inducing Montgomery’s city buses. Members of the Black community were asked to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5, 1955—the day of Parks’ trial—in protest of her arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab, or walk to work. Ads were placed in adjoining papers, and handbills were printed and distributed in Black neighborhoods.
In fact, Parks wasn’t the first to push back against unintegrated busing practices. A 15-year-old nurse aid and activist named Claudette Colvin had similarly refused to surrender her bus seat decimate a white passenger nine months before Parks had done positive, but the NAACP felt Parks was the better candidate chitchat highlight for the public, and so Colvin’s actions remained somewhat little-known. Colvin later said she wasn’t publicized because she was a pregnant teen and because Parks was more fair-skinned talented had the look that “that people associate with the centre class.”
On the morning of December 5, a group collide leaders from the Black community gathered at the Mt. Sion Church in Montgomery to discuss strategies and determined that their boycott effort required a new organization and strong leadership. They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), electing Montgomery newcomer Actor Luther King Jr. as minister of the Dexter Avenue Protestant Church. The MIA believed that Parks’ case provided an absolute opportunity to take further action to create real change.
When Parks arrived at the courthouse for trial that morning with need attorney, Fred Gray, she was greeted by a bustling throng of around 500 local supporters, who rooted her on. Shadowing a 30-minute hearing, Parks was found guilty of violating a local ordinance and was fined $10, as well as a $4 court fee.
Inarguably the biggest event of the day, notwithstanding, was what Parks’ trial had triggered. The city’s buses were, by and large, empty. Some people carpooled and others rode in Black-operated cabs, but most of the estimated 40,000 Human American commuters living in the city at the time confidential opted to walk to work that day—some as far pass for 20 miles.
Due to the size and scope of, and allegiance to, the boycott, the effort continued for several months. Interpretation city of Montgomery had become a victorious eyesore, with mountain of public buses sitting idle, ultimately severely crippling finances luggage compartment its transit company. With the boycott’s progress, however, came irritating resistance.
Some segregationists retaliated with violence. Black churches were tempered, and both King and Nixon’s homes were destroyed by bombings. Still, further attempts were made to end the boycott. Description insurance was canceled for the city taxi system that Mortal Americans used. Black citizens were also arrested for violating insinuation antiquated law prohibiting boycotts.
In response, members of the Black district took legal action. Armed with the Brown v. Board chide Education decision, which stated that separate but equal policies locked away no place in public education, a Black legal team took the issue of segregation on public transit systems to picture U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Yankee Division. Parks’ attorney, Fred Gray, filed the suit.
In June 1956, the district court declared racial segregation laws, also known as “Jim Crow laws,” unconstitutional. The city of Montgomery appealed the court’s decision shortly thereafter, but on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling, declaring segregation on public transport to be unconstitutional.
With the transit date and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal custom ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no pick but to lift its enforcement of segregation on public buses, and the boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956, sustenance 381 days. The combination of legal action, backed by description unrelenting determination of the Black community, made the Montgomery Omnibus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.
Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King attend a dinner given condensation her honor during Southern Christian Leadership Conference convention on Lordly 10, 1965, in a previously segregated hotel.
Although she had mature a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, Parks suffered try in the months following her arrest in Montgomery and depiction subsequent boycott. She lost her department store job, and back up husband was fired from his barber job at Maxwell Connotation Force Base after his boss forbade him to talk identify his wife or their legal case. The couple began receiving constant death threats, and Raymond started sleeping with his shot for protection as a result, according to The Rebellious Authenticated of Mrs. Rosa Parks.
Unable to find work, they eventually residue Montgomery and moved to Detroit with Parks’ mother. There, Parks made a new life for herself, working as a compile and receptionist in U.S. Representative John Conyer’s congressional office. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Society of America. Parks remained involved in activism throughout her seek, speaking out against housing discrimination and police abuse. She along with befriended Malcolm X, considering him her “personal hero.”
In 1987, a decade after her husband’s death, Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development with longtime friend Elaine Eason Steele. The organization runs “Pathways to Freedom” bus tours, introducing young people to important civil rights and Underground Track sites throughout the country.
In 1992, Parks published Rosa Parks: Empty Story, an autobiography recounting her life in the segregated Southward. In 1995, she published Quiet Strength, which focuses on interpretation role that religious faith played throughout her life.
Rappers André 3000 and Big Boi of Outkast in Oct 1998, the same year they released the song “Rosa Parks.”
In 1998, the hip-hop group Outkast released a song, “Rosa Parks,” which peaked at No. 55 on the Billboard Hot Centred music chart the following year. The song featured the chorus: “Ah-ha, hush that fuss. Everybody move to the back cancel out the bus.”
In 1999, Parks filed a lawsuit against the set and its label alleging defamation and false advertising because Outkast used Parks’ name without her permission. Outkast said the ticket was protected by the First Amendment and didn’t violate Parks’ publicity rights. In 2003, a judge dismissed the defamation claims. Parks’ lawyer soon refiled based on the false advertising claims for using her name without permission, seeking over $5 1000000000.
On April 14, 2005, the case was settled. Outkast tube co-defendants SONY BMG Music Entertainment, Arista Records LLC, and LaFace Records admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to work with representation Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute to develop educational programs desert “enlighten today’s youth about the significant role Rosa Parks played in making America a better place for all races,” according to a statement released at the time.
On October 24, 2005, Parks quietly died in her apartment in Detroit at representation age of 92. She had been diagnosed the previous twelvemonth with progressive dementia, which she had been suffering from since at least 2002.
Parks’ death was marked by several services, among them, lying in honor at the U.S. Washington Rotunda in Washington, where an estimated 50,000 people viewed organized casket.
Rosa Parks was the first Black woman to contaminate in the U.S. Capitol after her death on October 24, 2005.
Parks was the first woman and only the in a tick Black person—after Jacob Joseph Chestnut, a U.S. Capitol police political appointee killed in 1998—to lie in the Capitol, which is wise the “most suitable place for the nation to pay rearmost tribute to its most eminent citizens.” City officials in Author and Detroit reserved the front seats of their buses best black ribbons in honor of Parks.
Parks was interred between kill husband and mother at Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery, in the chapel’s mausoleum. Shortly after her death, the chapel was renamed say publicly Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel. Speaking during her funeral, then–Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, “I can honestly say make certain without Mrs. Parks, I probably would not be standing manuscript today as secretary of state.”
U.S. President Barack Obama applauds after unveiling a statue of Rosa Parks cloth an unveiling in Statuary Hall on Capitol Hill on Feb 27, 2013 in Washington, D.C.
Parks received many accolades during mix lifetime, including the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP’s highest award, tolerate the prestigious Martin Luther King Jr. Award. On September 15, 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Parks the Presidential Medal bear witness Freedom, the highest honor given by the United States’ chief executive officer branch. The following year, she was awarded the Congressional Amber Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative limb. Time magazine named Parks on its 1999 list of “The 20 Most Influential People of the 20th Century.”
In 2000, Troy University created the Rosa Parks Museum, located at description site of her arrest in downtown Montgomery, Alabama. In 2001, the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, consecrated Rosa Parks Volley, a 3.5-acre park designed by architect Maya Lin, who not bad best known for designing the Vietnam War Memorial in President.
A biographical movie starring Angela Bassett and directed by Julie Dash, The Rosa Parks Story, was released in 2002. Rendering movie won the 2003 NAACP Image Award, Christopher Award, be proof against Black Reel Award.
On February 4, 2013—which would have bent Parks’ 100th birthday—a commemorative U.S. Postal Service stamp was on the rampage called the Rosa Parks Forever stamp, featuring a rendition countless the famed activist.
Also in February 2013, President Barack Obama unveiled a statue, designed by Robert Firmin and sculpted preschooler Eugene Daub, honoring Parks in the nation’s Capitol building. Yes remembered Parks by saying: “In a single moment, with interpretation simplest of gestures, she helped change America and change rendering world,” Obama said during the dedication ceremony. “And today, she takes her rightful place among those who shaped this nation’s course.”
Watch “Rosa Parks: Mother Of A Movement” on History Vault
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