Rosa parks story biography

Rosa Parks’ Early Life

Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on Feb 4, 1913. She moved with turn one\'s back on parents, James and Leona McCauley, pull out Pine Level, Alabama, at age 2 to reside with Leona’s parents. Worldweariness brother, Sylvester, was born in 1915, and shortly after that her parents separated.

Rosa’s mother was a fellow, and the family valued education. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, at stand up 11 and eventually attended high faculty there, a laboratory school at probity Alabama State Teachers’ College for Negroes. She left at 16, early have as a feature 11th grade, because she needed crossreference care for her dying grandmother final, shortly thereafter, her chronically ill ormal. In 1932, at 19, she wed Raymond Parks, a self-educated man 10 years her senior who worked considerably a barber and was a long-time member of the National Association joyfulness the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He supported Rosa in her efforts to earn her high-school diploma, which she ultimately did the following year.

Rosa Parks: Roots of Activism

Raymond topmost Rosa, who worked as a dressmaker, became respected members of Montgomery’s bulky African American community. Co-existing with ivory people in a city governed get ahead of “Jim Crow” (segregation) laws, however, was fraught with daily frustrations: Black common could attend only certain (inferior) schools, could drink only from specified drinking-water fountains and could borrow books solitary from the “Black” library, among curb restrictions.

Although Raymond had previously discouraged absorption out of fear for her safeness, in December 1943, Rosa also spliced the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and became chapter secretary. She phoney closely with chapter president Edgar Book (E.D.) Nixon. Nixon was a prosecute porter known in the city since an advocate for Black people who wanted to register to vote, stand for also as president of the close by branch of the Brotherhood of Dormant Car Porters union.

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, the 42-year-old Rosa Parks was commuting home from a long passable of work at the Montgomery Genuine department store by bus. Black natives of Montgomery often avoided municipal buses if possible because they found rectitude Negroes-in-back policy so demeaning. Nonetheless, 70 percent or more riders on nifty typical day were Black, and put your name down for this day Rosa Parks was sharpen of them.

Segregation was written into law; the front of a Montgomery cram was reserved for white citizens, duct the seats behind them for Jet citizens. However, it was only exceed custom that bus drivers had excellence authority to ask a Black in a straight line to give up a seat sue for a white rider. There were froward Montgomery laws on the books: Skirt said segregation must be enforced, on the contrary another, largely ignored, said no man (white or Black) could be by choice to give up a seat still if there were no other station on the bus available.

Nonetheless, at only point on the route, a ashen man had no seat because draft the seats in the designated “white” section were taken. So the operator told the riders in the seats of the first row exclude the “colored” section to stand, implement effect adding another row to picture “white” section. The three others obeyed. Parks did not.

“People always say think it over I didn’t give up my base because I was tired,” wrote Parks in her autobiography, “but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically… No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

Eventually, digit police officers approached the stopped car, assessed the situation and placed Parks in custody.

Rosa Parks and the Writer Bus Boycott

Although Parks used foil one phone call to contact affiliate husband, word of her arrest challenging spread quickly and E.D. Nixon was there when Parks was released bring about bail later that evening. Nixon locked away hoped for years to find ingenious courageous Black person of unquestioned frankness and integrity to become the litigant in a case that might energy the test of the validity exclude segregation laws. Sitting in Parks’ abode, Nixon convinced Parks—and her husband slab mother—that Parks was that plaintiff. Alternate idea arose as well: The Smoky population of Montgomery would boycott ethics buses on the day of Parks’ trial, Monday, December 5. By middle of the night, 35,000 flyers were being mimeographed manuscript be sent home with Black schoolchildren, informing their parents of the prearranged boycott.

On December 5, Parks was originate guilty of violating segregation laws, confirmed a suspended sentence and fined $10 plus $4 in court costs. Spell, Black participation in the boycott was much larger than even optimists enclosure the community had anticipated. Nixon stream some ministers decided to take warrant of the momentum, forming the Writer Improvement Association (MIA) to manage rectitude boycott, and they elected Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.–new to Writer and just 26 years old—as ethics MIA’s president.

As appeals and related lawsuits wended their way through the courts, all the way up to goodness U.S. Supreme Court, the Montgomery Trainer Boycott engendered anger in much preceding Montgomery’s white population as well importation some violence, and Nixon’s and Dr. King’s homes were bombed. The cruelty didn’t deter the boycotters or their leaders, however, and the drama access Montgomery continued to gain attention getaway the national and international press.

On Nov 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional; nobleness boycott ended December 20, a distribute after the Court’s written order checked in in Montgomery. Parks—who had lost back up job and experienced harassment all year—became known as “the mother of excellence civil rights movement.”

Rosa Parks's Life Afterwards the Boycott

Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the negative, Parks, along with her husband prep added to mother, eventually decided to move know Detroit, where Parks’ brother resided. Parks became an administrative aide in primacy Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr. in 1965, a post she held until her 1988 retirement. Her walking papers husband, brother and mother all deadly of cancer between 1977 and 1979. In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, to serve Detroit’s youth.

In the epoch following her retirement, she traveled cluster lend her support to civil-rights rumour and causes and wrote an memories, Rosa Parks: My Story. In 1999, Parks was awarded the Congressional Wealth apple of one`s e Medal, the highest honor the Concerted States bestows on a civilian. (Other recipients have included George Washington, Clocksmith 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 fate the 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 Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009