ROSA PARKS

 

ROSA PARKS (1913-2005)

Rosa Parks was an African American civil rights activist who became famous for taking a stand - by sitting down.

Rosa Louise Parks was nationally recognized as the “mother of the modern day civil rights movement” in America. Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white male passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, December 1, 1955, triggered a wave of protest December 5, 1955 that reverberated throughout the United States. Her quiet courageous act changed America, its view of black people and redirected the course of history.

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama to James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a teacher. At the age of two she moved to her grandparents’ farm in Pine Level, Alabama with her mother and younger brother, Sylvester. At the age of 11 she enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls (Miss White’s School for Girls), a private school founded by liberal-minded women from the northern United States. After finishing Miss White’s School, she went on to Alabama State Teacher’s College High School. She was unable to graduate with her class, because of the illness of her grandmother and later her mother also. She received her high school diploma in 1934, after her marriage to Raymond Parks, December 18, 1932.

Rosa Parks was an early activist in the effort to free the “Scottsboro Boys,” a celebrated case in the 1930′s. Together, Raymond and Rosa worked in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP’s) programs. He was an active member and she served as secretary and later youth leader of the local branch. At the time of her arrest, she was preparing for a major youth conference.

On the evening of December 1, 1955, Parks sat at the front of a bus in Alabama, heading home after a  long day of work. She took a seat in the first of several rows designated for "colored" passengers. During her journey, she was asked by a conductor to give up her seat to a white  passenger. She refused and was arrested. (Segregation was written into law; the front of a Montgomery bus was reserved for white citizens, and the seats behind them for Black citizens. However, it was only by custom that bus drivers had the authority to ask a Black person to give up a seat for a white rider. There were contradictory Montgomery laws on the books: One said segregation must be enforced, but another, largely ignored, said no person (white or Black) could be asked to give up a seat even if there were no other seat on the bus available. Nonetheless, at one point on the route, a white man had no seat because all the seats in the designated “white” section were taken. So the driver told the riders in the four seats of the first row of the “colored” section to stand, in effect adding another row to the “white” section. The three others obeyed. Parks did not.)

After the arrest of Rosa Parks, black people of Montgomery and sympathizers of other races organized and promoted a boycott of the city bus line that lasted 381 days. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was appointed the spokesperson for the Bus Boycott and taught nonviolence to all participants. Contingent with the protest in Montgomery, others took shape throughout the south and the country. They took form as sit-ins, eat-ins, swim-ins, and similar causes. Thousands of courageous people joined the “protest” to demand equal rights for all people. It also led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation. Parks - who had lost her job and experienced harassment all year - became known as “the mother of the civil rights movement.”

Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the boycott, Parks, along with her husband and

mother, eventually decided to move to Detroit. Parks became an administrative aide in the Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr. in 1965, a post she held until her 1988 retirement.

In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, to serve Detroit’s youth. The organization runs "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours, introducing young people to important civil rights, history of their country and of the civil rights movement.

President Clinton presented Rosa Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. She received a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999, the highest honor the United States bestows on a civilian. (Other recipients have included George Washington, Thomas Edison, Betty Ford and Mother Teresa.)

When she died at age 92 on October 24, 2005, she became the first woman in the nation’s history to lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol.

A quiet exemplification of courage, dignity, and determination; Rosa Parks was a symbol to all to remain free.

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

https://www.rosaparks.org/biography/