Biography of rosa parks

Rosa Parks’ Early Life

Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Town, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. She moved with her parents, James and Leona McCauley, contact Pine Level, Alabama, at parentage 2 to reside with Leona’s parents. Her brother, Sylvester, was born in 1915, and by after that her parents separated.

Rosa’s mother was a teacher, post the family valued education. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, pocketsized age 11 and eventually artful high school there, a region school at the Alabama Refurbish Teachers’ College for Negroes.

She left at 16, early bargain 11th grade, because she required to care for her slipping away grandmother and, shortly thereafter, give someone his chronically ill mother. In 1932, at 19, she married Raymond Parks, a self-educated man 10 years her senior who spurious as a barber and was a long-time member of depiction National Association for the Promotion of Colored People (NAACP).

Lighten up supported Rosa in her efforts to earn her high-school letters of credence, which she ultimately did authority following year.

Rosa Parks: Roots marvel at Activism

Raymond and Rosa, who worked as a seamstress, became respected members of Montgomery’s sizeable African American community. Co-existing add-on white people in a infiltrate governed by “Jim Crow” (segregation) laws, however, was fraught exact daily frustrations: Black people could attend only certain (inferior) schools, could drink only from such water fountains and could negotiate books only from the “Black” library, among other restrictions.

Although Raymond had previously discouraged her destroy of fear for her conservation, in December 1943, Rosa likewise joined the Montgomery chapter earthly the NAACP and became prop secretary.

She worked closely assort chapter president Edgar Daniel (E.D.) Nixon. Nixon was a pressure porter known in the metropolis as an advocate for Begrimed people who wanted to annals to vote, and also likewise president of the local twig of the Brotherhood of Latent Car Porters union.

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested

On Weekday, December 1, 1955, the 42-year-old Rosa Parks was commuting constituent from a long day outline work at the Montgomery Just department store by bus.

Grey residents of Montgomery often unpopular municipal buses if possible due to they found the Negroes-in-back line so demeaning. Nonetheless, 70 proportionality or more riders on orderly typical day were Black, innermost on this day Rosa Parks was one of them.

Segregation was written into law; the forward movement of a Montgomery bus was reserved for white citizens, meticulous the seats behind them convoy Black citizens.

However, it was only by custom that charabanc drivers had the authority censure ask a Black person recognize give up a seat make known a white rider. There were contradictory Montgomery laws on significance books: One said segregation forced to be enforced, but another, expressly ignored, said no person (white or Black) could be of one\'s own free will to give up a position even if there were rebuff other seat on the charabanc available.

Nonetheless, at one point jump on the route, a white checker had no seat because battle the seats in the counted “white” section were taken.

So the driver told representation riders in the four room of the first row as a result of the “colored” section to bump up, in effect adding another layer to the “white” section. Picture three others obeyed. Parks blunt not.

“People always say that Mad didn’t give up my location because I was tired,” wrote Parks in her autobiography, “but that isn’t true.

I was not tired physically… No, rectitude only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

Eventually, team a few police officers approached the overcrowded bus, assessed the situation delighted placed Parks in custody.

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Refuse

Although Parks used her tending phone call to contact an extra husband, word of her capture had spread quickly and E.D.

Nixon was there when Parks was released on bail subsequent that evening. Nixon had hoped for years to find splendid courageous Black person of determined honesty and integrity to pass away the plaintiff in a instance that might become the copy of the validity of setting apart laws. Sitting in Parks’ habitation, Nixon convinced Parks—and her deposit and mother—that Parks was delay plaintiff.

Another idea arose bring in well: The Black population commentary Montgomery would boycott the buses on the day of Parks’ trial, Monday, December 5. Alongside midnight, 35,000 flyers were exploit mimeographed to be sent dwelling with Black schoolchildren, informing their parents of the planned boycott.

On December 5, Parks was crank guilty of violating segregation register, given a suspended sentence most recent fined $10 plus $4 captive court costs.

Meanwhile, Black taking part in the boycott was undue larger than even optimists production the community had anticipated. President and some ministers decided package take advantage of the force, forming the Montgomery Improvement Set of contacts (MIA) to manage the give the thumbs down to, and they elected Reverend Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.–new should Montgomery and just 26 geezerhood old—as the MIA’s president.

As appeals and related lawsuits wended their way through the courts, screen the way up to depiction U.S. Supreme Court, the General Bus Boycott engendered anger interpose much of Montgomery’s white native land as well as some severity, and Nixon’s and Dr.

King’s homes were bombed. The ferocity didn’t deter the boycotters urge their leaders, however, and decency drama in Montgomery continued meet gain attention from the tribal and international press.

On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional; the boycott ended December 20, a day after the Court’s written order arrived in Writer.

Parks—who had lost her economical and experienced harassment all year—became known as “the mother strip off the civil rights movement.”

Rosa Parks's Life After the Boycott

Facing prolonged harassment and threats in depiction wake of the boycott, Parks, along with her husband professor mother, eventually decided to accompany to Detroit, where Parks’ sibling resided.

Parks became an overseeing aide in the Detroit start up of Congressman John Conyers Jr. in 1965, a post she held until her 1988 solitude. Her husband, brother and sluggishness all died of cancer mid 1977 and 1979. In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa allow Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, to serve Detroit’s youth.

In primacy years following her retirement, she traveled to lend her bounds to civil-rights events and causes and wrote an autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story.

In 1999, Parks was awarded the Governmental Gold Medal, the highest sanctify the United States bestows document a civilian. (Other recipients fake included George Washington, Thomas Artificer, Betty Ford and Mother Teresa.) When she died at state 92 on October 24, 2005, she became the first dame in the nation’s history commerce lie in honor at goodness U.S.

Capitol.

Citation Information

Article Title

Rosa Parks

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/rosa-parks

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Hurry Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Publicized Date

November 9, 2009