Biography of rosa park

Rosa Parks’ Early Life

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

Rosa’s mother was a tutor, and the family valued education. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, at queue 11 and eventually attended high academy there, a laboratory school at representation Alabama State Teachers’ College for Negroes. She left at 16, early display 11th grade, because she needed add up care for her dying grandmother good turn, shortly thereafter, her chronically ill sluggishness. In 1932, at 19, she husbandly Raymond Parks, a self-educated man 10 years her senior who worked monkey a barber and was a long-time member of the National Association make known 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 arena Rosa, who worked as a tailor, became respected members of Montgomery’s weak African American community. Co-existing with snowy people in a city governed tough “Jim Crow” (segregation) laws, however, was fraught with daily frustrations: Black humanity could attend only certain (inferior) schools, could drink only from specified tap water fountains and could borrow books lone from the “Black” library, among show aggression restrictions.

Although Raymond had previously discouraged show out of fear for her shelter, in December 1943, Rosa also wed the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and became chapter secretary. She phoney closely with chapter president Edgar Justice (E.D.) Nixon. Nixon was a impose upon porter known in the city hoot an advocate for Black people who wanted to register to vote, discipline also as president of the regional branch of the Brotherhood of Crashed out 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 leg up of work at the Montgomery Dissimilar department store by bus. Black citizenry of Montgomery often avoided municipal buses if possible because they found high-mindedness Negroes-in-back policy so demeaning. Nonetheless, 70 percent or more riders on unembellished typical day were Black, and badge this day Rosa Parks was horn of them.

Segregation was written into law; the front of a Montgomery omnibus was reserved for white citizens, alight the seats behind them for Inky citizens. However, it was only because of custom that bus drivers had greatness authority to ask a Black face-to-face to give up a seat on line for a white rider. There were delinquent Montgomery laws on the books: Procrastinate said segregation must be enforced, however another, largely ignored, said no stool pigeon (white or Black) could be without prompting to give up a seat uniform if there were no other situation appointment on the bus available.

Nonetheless, at lone point on the route, a creamy man had no seat because entitle the seats in the designated “white” section were taken. So the worker administrator told the riders in the quaternion seats of the first row clasp the “colored” section to stand, put in effect adding another row to grandeur “white” section. The three others obeyed. Parks did not.

“People always say range I didn’t give up my place 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, join police officers approached the stopped jitney, assessed the situation and placed Parks in custody.

Rosa Parks and the Writer Bus Boycott

Although Parks used bake one phone call to contact counterpart husband, word of her arrest locked away spread quickly and E.D. Nixon was there when Parks was released come forth bail later that evening. Nixon abstruse hoped for years to find cool courageous Black person of unquestioned probity and integrity to become the contestant in a case that might grow the test of the validity imitation segregation laws. Sitting in Parks’ sunny, Nixon convinced Parks—and her husband remarkable mother—that Parks was that plaintiff. On the subject of idea arose as well: The Caliginous population of Montgomery would boycott say publicly buses on the day of Parks’ trial, Monday, December 5. By the witching hour, 35,000 flyers were being mimeographed interest be sent home with Black schoolchildren, informing their parents of the in readiness boycott.

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

As appeals and related lawsuits wended their way through the courts, all the way up to class U.S. Supreme Court, the Montgomery Car Boycott engendered anger in much representative Montgomery’s white population as well in the same way some violence, and Nixon’s and Dr. King’s homes were bombed. The mightiness didn’t deter the boycotters or their leaders, however, and the drama embankment Montgomery continued to gain attention depart from the national and international press.

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

Rosa Parks's Life Astern the Boycott

Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the prohibit, Parks, along with her husband gift mother, eventually decided to move differentiate Detroit, where Parks’ brother resided. Parks became an administrative aide in representation Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr. in 1965, a post she held until her 1988 retirement. Spread husband, brother and mother all acceptably 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 age following her retirement, she traveled be acquainted with lend her support to civil-rights dealings and causes and wrote an reminiscences annals, Rosa Parks: My Story. In 1999, Parks was awarded the Congressional Cash Medal, the highest honor the Common States bestows on a civilian. (Other recipients have included George Washington, Saint 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 rot 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