Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks
Parks in 1956
Rosa Parks
Born	Rosa Louise McCauley 4 2, 1913
Birthplace	Tuskegee, Alabama, U.S.
Died	Template:Death date and age Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Civil rights activist
Known for	Montgomery bus boycott
Education	Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes
Awards	Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Gold Medal

Rosa Louise Parks (née McCauley; February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American civil rights activist whose refusal to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, became one of the most consequential acts of defiance in American history. Her arrest that evening set in motion the Montgomery bus boycott, a 381-day mass protest that galvanized the broader civil rights movement and brought national and international attention to the injustices of racial segregation in the American South. Often referred to as the "mother of the civil rights movement," Parks was far more than the symbol of a single moment of quiet resistance; she was a seasoned organizer and investigator for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) who had spent years documenting racial and sexual violence against Black citizens before her famous arrest. In the decades that followed the boycott, Parks continued her activism in Detroit, Michigan, supporting causes ranging from the Black power movement to anti-apartheid efforts. She received numerous honors during her lifetime, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, and after her death in 2005, she became the first woman to lie in honor in the United States Capitol rotunda.

Early Life

Rosa Louise McCauley was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama, to James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona (née Edwards) McCauley, a teacher. She grew up under the oppressive system of Jim Crow segregation that governed virtually every aspect of daily life for Black citizens in the American South. Racial separation was enforced in schools, public transportation, restaurants, and other public facilities, and the threat of racial violence was a constant presence in the lives of Black families.

Parks spent much of her childhood in Pine Level, Alabama, where she lived with her mother and maternal grandparents after her parents separated. Her grandfather, a former enslaved person, was a strong advocate for racial equality and instilled in Parks a sense of self-worth and resistance to injustice. Her mother, as a teacher, placed a high value on education, and Parks attended local schools for Black children, which were underfunded and operated on shortened schedules to accommodate the agricultural economy.

As a young girl, Parks became acutely aware of the racial inequities that pervaded Southern society. The Ku Klux Klan was active in her community, and she later recalled her grandfather standing guard at the door of their home with a shotgun during periods of racial tension. These early experiences shaped her understanding of racial injustice and planted the seeds of the activism that would define her adult life.

She later moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where she would spend her formative adult years. In 1932, she married Raymond Parks, a barber and an early member of the NAACP who was active in efforts to defend the Scottsboro Boys, a group of Black teenagers who had been falsely accused of assaulting two white women. Raymond Parks's activism had a significant influence on Rosa, deepening her commitment to the struggle for civil rights.

Education

Parks attended the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery, a private institution founded by liberal-minded women from the North that emphasized academic subjects as well as domestic skills. She later enrolled at the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes (now Alabama State University) for secondary and further education. However, she was forced to leave school before completing her studies in order to care for her ailing grandmother and, subsequently, her mother. After her marriage to Raymond Parks, she returned to school and earned her high school diploma in 1933, at a time when only about seven percent of Black Americans had completed high school.

Career

NAACP Activism

In 1943, Parks joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, where she served as the chapter's secretary, a role she held for more than a decade. In this capacity, she worked closely with chapter president E.D. Nixon and other local activists. Her duties extended well beyond clerical work; she investigated cases of racial and sexual violence committed against Black citizens and organized campaigns to bring attention to these injustices.

Among the cases Parks investigated was that of Recy Taylor, a Black woman from Abbeville, Alabama, who was gang-raped by six white men in 1944. Parks traveled to Abbeville to interview Taylor and gather evidence, and the NAACP launched a national campaign demanding justice in the case. She also worked on the case of Jeremiah Reeves, a Black teenager who was sentenced to death after being accused of raping a white woman in Montgomery. These investigative efforts laid important groundwork for the broader civil rights campaigns that would follow.

Despite policies specifically designed to disenfranchise Black citizens—including poll taxes, literacy tests, and other bureaucratic obstacles—Parks successfully registered to vote after three separate attempts between 1943 and 1945. Her persistence in securing the franchise was itself an act of resistance in an era when Black voter registration in the South was systematically suppressed.

In the summer of 1955, Parks attended a workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, a training center for labor organizers and civil rights activists. The experience reinforced her commitment to the movement and connected her with a network of activists from across the South.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

On December 1, 1955, Parks boarded a city bus in Montgomery after a day of work at the Montgomery Fair department store, where she worked as a seamstress. She took a seat in the middle section of the bus, which Black passengers were permitted to occupy unless white passengers needed the seats. When the bus became crowded and the driver, James F. Blake, ordered Parks and three other Black passengers to give up their seats to accommodate white riders, Parks refused to move.

Parks was not the first Black person in Montgomery to refuse to give up a bus seat. In March 1955, fifteen-year-old high school student Claudette Colvin had been arrested for a similar act of defiance. Other Black Montgomerians had also been arrested for refusing to comply with the bus segregation system. However, local civil rights leaders, including E.D. Nixon and attorney Fred Gray, had been searching for a person who would serve as a strong legal test case against segregation. Parks, with her quiet dignity, her standing in the community, and her long record of activism with the NAACP, was considered an ideal candidate.

Parks was arrested and taken to the city jail. She was charged with violating Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery city code, which enforced racial segregation on public buses. That evening, word of her arrest spread quickly through the Black community. Jo Ann Robinson, president of the Women's Political Council (WPC), an organization of Black professional women in Montgomery, sprang into action. Working through the night with two students, Robinson mimeographed approximately 35,000 leaflets calling for a one-day boycott of the city's buses on December 5, the day of Parks's trial.

The boycott on December 5, 1955, was an overwhelming success. The vast majority of Black Montgomerians—who constituted roughly 75 percent of the city's bus ridership—refused to ride the buses. That evening, community leaders met at the Holt Street Baptist Church and voted to extend the boycott indefinitely. They established the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to coordinate the protest and elected a young minister, Martin Luther King Jr., as its president.

The MIA organized an elaborate alternative transportation system, including carpools, shared taxis, and walking networks, to sustain the boycott. Black-owned taxi companies offered rides at reduced fares, and some white employers, unwilling to lose their domestic workers, provided transportation as well. The boycott placed enormous economic pressure on the city's bus company and on downtown businesses.

Parks and other boycott leaders faced significant personal costs. Parks lost her job at the department store, and her husband Raymond was also fired from his position. The couple received threatening phone calls and endured ongoing harassment. E.D. Nixon's home was bombed, as was King's. Despite these dangers, the boycott held firm for 381 days.

Parks was found guilty of violating the segregation ordinance and fined $10 plus $4 in court costs. Her conviction was appealed. Meanwhile, attorney Fred Gray filed a federal lawsuit, Browder v. Gayle, on behalf of four Black women—Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith—who had been mistreated on Montgomery buses. On November 13, 1956, the United States Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling that bus segregation was unconstitutional. The boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956, when the Supreme Court's order was served on Montgomery officials, and Black riders once again boarded the city's buses—this time with the legal right to sit wherever they chose.

Move to Detroit and Continued Activism

The aftermath of the boycott brought continued hardship for Parks. Unable to find employment in Montgomery due to her notoriety and facing ongoing threats, Parks, along with her husband and mother, relocated to Detroit, Michigan, in 1957. The move was a difficult transition, and Parks struggled financially for several years.

In Detroit, Parks continued her civil rights work. In 1965, she was hired by Congressman John Conyers as a secretary and receptionist in his Detroit office, a position she held until her retirement in 1988. During her years with Conyers, she maintained an active role in civil rights causes, attending marches, speaking at events, and supporting various campaigns for justice.

Parks was a supporter of the Black power movement and advocated for racial justice causes that extended beyond the traditional civil rights framework. She supported individuals who faced what she considered unjust legal persecution, including Joanne Little, a Black woman who was charged with murder after killing a jailer who had sexually assaulted her; Gary Tyler, a Black teenager convicted of murder in Louisiana under disputed circumstances; and Angela Davis, the political activist and scholar who was tried and acquitted on charges related to a courthouse shootout.

Parks was also an outspoken opponent of apartheid in South Africa. She participated in protests and conferences as part of the Free South Africa Movement during the 1980s and was among those who called for the release of Nelson Mandela. She later attended Mandela's inauguration as president of South Africa in 1994.

In 1987, Parks co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development with Elaine Eason Steele. The institute was established to provide guidance and career training for young people and to educate them about the history of the civil rights movement. The organization offered programs including "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours that took young people to significant civil rights sites across the country.

Personal Life

Parks married Raymond Parks in 1932. Raymond was a self-educated man who worked as a barber and was an active member of the NAACP. The couple did not have children. Raymond Parks died on August 19, 1977, after a long battle with throat cancer.

Following the Montgomery bus boycott, Parks endured significant financial difficulties. Both she and her husband lost their jobs, and they struggled to find stable employment in Montgomery before their move to Detroit. Parks also experienced health problems throughout her later years.

In 1994, Parks was assaulted and robbed in her Detroit home by a young man named Joseph Skipper. The incident drew national attention and an outpouring of concern for the elderly activist, who was 81 at the time. She recovered from her injuries but remained shaken by the experience.

In her later years, Parks lived quietly in Detroit, though she continued to make occasional public appearances. She suffered from progressive dementia in the final years of her life. Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005, at the age of 92, in her apartment in Detroit. Her funeral and memorial services were held in three cities—Montgomery, Washington, D.C., and Detroit—reflecting the national scope of her impact. She was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit.

Recognition

Parks received numerous awards and honors during her lifetime and posthumously. In 1979, the NAACP awarded her its Spingarn Medal, the organization's highest honor. In 1996, President Bill Clinton presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. In 1999, she received the Congressional Gold Medal, making her one of a select group of individuals to have received both awards.

Parks was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993. She received the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize and was named one of the 20 most influential and iconic figures of the 20th century by Time magazine.

After her death on October 24, 2005, Parks became the first woman and second non-government official to lie in honor in the United States Capitol rotunda. An estimated 50,000 people paid their respects during the two-day public viewing in Washington, D.C.

In the years since her death, Parks has continued to be honored in numerous ways. The Rosa Parks Library and Museum was established at Troy University in Montgomery, Alabama, near the site of her arrest. The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, acquired the actual bus on which Parks made her stand and displays it as a permanent exhibit. The minor planet 284996 Rosaparks was named in her honor.

Communities across the United States continue to honor Parks's memory with annual events and commemorations. In Gainesville, Florida, the Rosa Parks Quiet Courage Committee has held an annual event at the Rosa Parks Transfer Station for two decades, honoring Parks and fellow activist Claudette Colvin during Black History Month. Rowan University in New Jersey has held an annual Rosa Parks luncheon for over two decades. Personal and professional items from Parks's life have also become valued historical artifacts, with collections of her papers and possessions going to auction and museums.

In 2017, Parks's house from Detroit was disassembled and transported to Berlin, Germany, by American artist Ryan Mendoza, who reassembled it as an art installation exploring themes of race, memory, and displacement. The project attracted international attention and raised questions about how the material legacy of civil rights figures should be preserved.

Legacy

Rosa Parks's act of defiance on a Montgomery bus in 1955 became one of the defining moments of the American civil rights movement. The Montgomery bus boycott that followed her arrest demonstrated the power of organized, nonviolent mass protest and served as a model for subsequent civil rights campaigns, including the sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and marches that characterized the movement throughout the late 1950s and 1960s. The boycott also launched the career of Martin Luther King Jr. as a national civil rights leader.

Parks's legacy, however, extends beyond the single act for which she is most commonly remembered. Her years of work with the NAACP investigating racial and sexual violence, her efforts to register voters, and her decades of activism after the boycott reflect a lifetime of sustained commitment to racial justice. Scholars have increasingly emphasized the breadth and depth of Parks's activism, noting that the popular narrative of a tired seamstress who simply refused to give up her seat obscures the deliberate, strategic nature of her resistance and the long organizational history that preceded and followed the boycott.

Parks's influence also extended to international struggles against racial oppression. Her participation in the Free South Africa Movement and her support for anti-apartheid activism connected the American civil rights struggle with global movements for racial justice. Nelson Mandela, upon his release from prison in 1990, reportedly told Parks, "You sustained me while I was in prison all those years."

The impact of the Montgomery bus boycott on public transportation policy in the United States was profound. The legal victory in Browder v. Gayle established that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional, and the boycott's success inspired similar challenges to segregation in other Southern cities.

Parks's birthday, February 4, and the anniversary of her arrest, December 1, are observed in communities across the United States. Numerous schools, streets, transit facilities, and public buildings bear her name. The continued annual commemorations—from Gainesville, Florida, to Glassboro, New Jersey—attest to the enduring power of her example and the persistence of the ideals for which she fought.