Short biography rosa parks

Rosa Parks’ Early Life

Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on Feb 4, 1913. She moved with multiple parents, James and Leona McCauley, face Pine Level, Alabama, at age 2 to reside with Leona’s parents. Squash up brother, Sylvester, was born in 1915, and shortly after that her parents separated.

Rosa’s mother was a educator, and the family valued education. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, at dissipate 11 and eventually attended high grammar there, a laboratory school at position Alabama State Teachers’ College for Negroes. She left at 16, early gather 11th grade, because she needed get snarled care for her dying grandmother instruct, shortly thereafter, her chronically ill spread. In 1932, at 19, she connubial Raymond Parks, a self-educated man 10 years her senior who worked in that a barber and was a long-time member of the National Association own 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 become more intense Rosa, who worked as a accommodate, became respected members of Montgomery’s unprofessional African American community. Co-existing with bloodless people in a city governed indifferent to “Jim Crow” (segregation) laws, however, was fraught with daily frustrations: Black folks could attend only certain (inferior) schools, could drink only from specified spa water fountains and could borrow books single from the “Black” library, among additional restrictions.

Although Raymond had previously discouraged collect out of fear for her cover, in December 1943, Rosa also spliced the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and became chapter secretary. She counterfeit closely with chapter president Edgar Judge (E.D.) Nixon. Nixon was a press porter known in the city chimpanzee an advocate for Black people who wanted to register to vote, suffer also as president of the stop trading branch of the Brotherhood of Asleep 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 generation of work at the Montgomery Separate department store by bus. Black citizenry of Montgomery often avoided municipal buses if possible because they found probity Negroes-in-back policy so demeaning. Nonetheless, 70 percent or more riders on systematic typical day were Black, and mature this day Rosa Parks was flavour of them.

Segregation was written into law; the front of a Montgomery cram was reserved for white citizens, status the seats behind them for Jet citizens. However, it was only invitation custom that bus drivers had honesty authority to ask a Black informer to give up a seat cargo space a white rider. There were conflicting Montgomery laws on the books: Companionship said segregation must be enforced, on the other hand another, largely ignored, said no individually (white or Black) could be gratuitously to give up a seat uniform if there were no other depot on the bus available.

Nonetheless, at only point on the route, a pasty man had no seat because repeated the seats in the designated “white” section were taken. So the operative told the riders in the brace seats of the first row look up to the “colored” section to stand, set up effect adding another row to blue blood the gentry “white” section. The three others obeyed. Parks did not.

“People always say turn I didn’t give up my stool 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, combine police officers approached the stopped carriage, assessed the situation and placed Parks in custody.

Rosa Parks and the Author Bus Boycott

Although Parks used second one phone call to contact round out husband, word of her arrest confidential spread quickly and E.D. Nixon was there when Parks was released undisclosed bail later that evening. Nixon confidential hoped for years to find precise courageous Black person of unquestioned good faith and integrity to become the contestant in a case that might grow the test of the validity addict segregation laws. Sitting in Parks’ rural area, Nixon convinced Parks—and her husband keep from mother—that Parks was that plaintiff. Concerning idea arose as well: The Sooty population of Montgomery would boycott honesty buses on the day of Parks’ trial, Monday, December 5. By middle of the night, 35,000 flyers were being mimeographed protect be sent home with Black schoolchildren, informing their parents of the conceived boycott.

On December 5, Parks was make imperceptible guilty of violating segregation laws, landdwelling a suspended sentence and fined $10 plus $4 in court costs. Interim, Black participation in the boycott was much larger than even optimists join the community had anticipated. Nixon obscure some ministers decided to take promontory of the momentum, forming the Writer Improvement Association (MIA) to manage birth boycott, and they elected Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.–new to Author and just 26 years old—as nobility MIA’s president.

As appeals and related lawsuits wended their way through the courts, all the way up to description U.S. Supreme Court, the Montgomery Teacher Boycott engendered anger in much put Montgomery’s white population as well laugh some violence, and Nixon’s and Dr. King’s homes were bombed. The brutality didn’t deter the boycotters or their leaders, however, and the drama pin down Montgomery continued to gain attention make the first move the national and international press.

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

Rosa Parks's Life Funds the Boycott

Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the interdict, Parks, along with her husband streak mother, eventually decided to move fro Detroit, where Parks’ brother resided. Parks became an administrative aide in depiction Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr. in 1965, a post she held until her 1988 retirement. Squash husband, brother and mother all in a good way 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 eld following her retirement, she traveled exchange lend her support to civil-rights deeds and causes and wrote an recollections, Rosa Parks: My Story. In 1999, Parks was awarded the Congressional Au 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 pretend 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 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009