Rosa Parks was a civil rights leader who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
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Early Life
On February 4, 1913, Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. At two, she and her parents, James and Leona McCauley, moved to Pine Level, Alabama, to live with Leona’s parents. Sylvester, her brother, was born in 1915, and her parents divorced soon after.
Rosa’s mother was a teacher, and education was a priority in the family. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, when she was 11 years old and eventually attended the Alabama State Teachers’ College for Negroes, a laboratory school. She dropped out of school when she was 16, in the middle of 11th grade, to care for her dying grandmother and, later, her chronically ill mother.
Marriage
She married Raymond Parks, a self-educated barber and long-time member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in 1932 when she was 19 years old (NAACP). He encouraged Rosa to finish high school the next year, which she accomplished.
Activism
Rosa Parks helped kick-start the civil rights movement in the United States. She refused to hand over her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was led by Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Claudette Colvin, 15, who was arrested on a Montgomery bus in March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise Smith, and Susie McDonald, among others, had challenged Alabama’s bus segregation laws before her.
Parks who was employed as a seamstress in a department shop was sacked after her incarceration, despite assurances that it was not due to the boycott. She was also subjected to a barrage of phone calls and death threats. Parks, her husband, and her mother packed their belongings and moved to Detroit in 1957.
Parks worked as a secretary for US Representative John Conyers’ congressional office in Detroit and served on the Planned Parenthood board of directors.
Awards
In 1998 Rosa L. Parks was voted by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. A Museum and Library were built in her honour, in Montgomery, AL and opened in the fall of the year 2000.
The first Lifetime Achievement Award was given by The Institute for Research on Women & Gender, Stanford University. “The Rosa Parks Story” was filmed in Montgomery, Alabama May 2001 and aired on February 24, 2002, on the CBS television network. Rosa Parks continues to receive numerous awards including the Gandhi, King, Ikeda Award for peace.
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Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was also presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton, the highest honour bestowed by the executive branch of the US government. The Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honour bestowed by the US legislative body, was bestowed on her the following year.
Death
Rosa Parks died in Detroit at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005. She was buried alongside her mother and husband. The Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel, where the service took place, was later renamed after her.
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