Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. After her parents separated, Rosa's mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama to live with her parents, both former slaves and strong advocates for racial equality. The family lived on a farm, where Rosa would spend her youth.

Taught to read by her mother at a young age, Rosa went on to attend a segregated, one-room school in Pine Level, Alabama, which often lacked adequate school supplies such as desks. African American students were forced to walk to the 1st through 6th grade schoolhouse while the city of Pine Level provided bus transportation as well as a new school building for white students.

In 1929, while in the 11th grade and attending a laboratory school for secondary education led by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes, Rosa left school to tend to both her sick grandmother and mother back in Pine Level. She never returned to her studies; instead, she got a job at a shirt factory in Montgomery.

In 1932, at age 19, Rosa met and married Raymond Parks, a barber and an active member of the NAACP. With Raymond's support, Rosa earned her high school degree in 1933. She soon became actively involved in civil rights issues by joining the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943, serving as the chapter's youth leader as well as secretary to NAACP President E.D. Nixon.

The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be segregated and that bus drivers had the “powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions of the code.” While operating a bus, drivers were required to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and black passengers by assigning seats. This was accomplished with a line roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front of the bus and black passengers in the back. When a black passenger boarded the bus, they had to get on at the front to pay their fare and then get off and re-board the bus at the back door. When the seats in the front of the bus filled up and more white passengers got on, the bus driver would move back the sign separating black and white passengers and, if necessary, ask black passengers give up their seat.

For years, the black community had complained that the situation was unfair. Rose Parks once stated, “My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest. I did a lot of walking in Montgomery.” One day in 1943, Rosa boarded the bus and paid the fare. She then moved to her seat but driver James Blake told her to follow city rules and enter the bus again from the back door. Rosa exited the vehicle and he drove off leaving her in the rain. Rosa waited for the next bus, determined never to ride with Blake again.

On December 1, 1955, after a long day's work at a Montgomery department store, where she worked as a seamstress, Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus for home. She took a seat in the first row designated for “colored” passengers. Initially, she did not notice that the bus driver was the same man, James Blake, who had left her in the rain in 1943. Though the city's bus ordinance did give drivers the authority to assign seats, it didn't specifically give them the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone, regardless of race. However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of requiring black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers, when no other seats were available. If the black passenger protested, the bus driver would refuse service and could call the police to have them removed.

As the bus Rosa was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and Blake noticed that 2 or 3 white passengers were standing in the aisle. He stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row, waved his hand, and ordered the four black passengers to give up their seats. “I felt a determination to cover my body like a quilt on a winter night”, Rosa recalled. Blake then said, “Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats.” They didn't move at the beginning, but he then said, “Let me have these seats.” The other three people moved, including the black man sitting next to her. Rosa moved, but toward the window seat. She did not get up to move to the re-designated “colored” section. Blake then said, “Why don't you stand up?” to which Rosa replied, “I don't think I should have to stand up.” And he said, “Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the police and have you arrested.” She replied, “You may do that.” Black called the police and had her arrested. Later, Rosa recalled that her refusal wasn't because she was physically tired. “People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in…I thought of Emmett Till and I just couldn't go back.”

The police arrested Rosa at the scene. As the officer took her away, she asked, “Why do you push us around?” He replied, “I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest” She later said, “I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind” Rosa was charge with violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code, although technically she had not taken a white-only seat; she had been in a colored section and wasn’t allowed to be forced out of her seat. Edgar Nixon, president of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, and her friend Clifford Durr bailed her out of jail the next evening.

On the evening that Rosa Parks was arrested, Nixon began forming plans to organize a boycott of Montgomery's city buses. Ads were placed in local papers, and handbills were printed and distributed in black neighborhoods. Members of the African American community were asked to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5, 1955, the day of Rosa's trial, in protest of her arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school or take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African American community not riding the bus, organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful.

On the morning of December 5, a group of leaders from the African American community gathered at the Mt. Zion Church in Montgomery to discuss strategies, and determined that their boycott effort required a new organization and strong leadership. They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, electing Montgomery newcomer Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The organization believed that Rosa Parks' case provided an excellent opportunity to take further action to create real change.

When Rosa arrived at the courthouse for trial that morning with her attorney, Fred Gray, she was greeted by a bustling crowd of around 500 local supporters, who rooted her on. Following a 30 minute hearing, Rosa was found guilty of violating a local ordinance and was fined $10, as well as a $4 court fee. This triggered the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The city's buses were, by and large, empty. Some people carpooled and others rode in African American-operated cabs, but most of the estimated 40,000 African American commuters living in the city had opted to walk to work that day, regardless of the distance.

Due to the size and scope of, and loyalty to, boycott participation, the effort continued for several months. Dozens of public buses sat idle, ultimately severely crippling finances for its transit company. With the boycott's progress, however, came strong resistance. Some segregationists retaliated with violence. Black churches were burned, and both Dr. King’s and Edgar Nixon's homes were destroyed by bombings. The city made multiple attempts to end the boycott. The insurance was canceled for the city taxi system that was used by African Americans. Black citizens were arrested for violating an obsolete law prohibiting boycotts.

In response to the ensuing events, members of the African American community took legal action. Using the “Brown v. Board of Education” decision, which stated that separate but equal policies had no place in public education, a black legal team, led by Rosa’s attorney, took the issue of segregation on public transit systems to the U.S. District Court. In June 1956, the district court declared racial segregation laws (also known as “Jim Crow laws”) unconstitutional. The city of Montgomery appealed the court's decision shortly, but on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling.

With the transit authority and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift its enforcement of segregation on public buses, and the boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956. The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African American community, made the 381 day Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.

Although she had become a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks suffered hardship in the months following her arrest in Montgomery and the boycott. She lost her department store job and her husband was fired after his boss forbade him to talk about his wife or their legal case. Unable to find work, they eventually left Montgomery; the couple, along with Rosa's mother, moved to Detroit, Michigan. There, Rosa made a new life for herself, working as a secretary and receptionist in U.S. Representative John Conyer's congressional office. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

In 1987, Rosa founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The organization runs “Pathways to Freedom” bus tours, introducing young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country.

Rosa Parks received many honors during her lifetime, including the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP's highest award, and the prestigious Martin Luther King Jr. Award. On September 9, 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Rosa the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the United States' executive branch. The following year, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch.

On October 24, 2005, Rosa Parks died in her apartment in Detroit, Michigan. She had been diagnosed the previous year with progressive dementia. Her death was marked by several memorial services, an estimated 50,000 people attended the ceremony at Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. Rosa was laid to rest between her husband and mother at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery, in the chapel's mausoleum. Shortly after her death, the chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel.

February 4, 2013 marks what would have been Rosa Parks' 100th birthday. In celebration of her centennial, memorial ceremonies and other events honoring her was planned nationwide. Among these honors, a commemorative U.S. Postal Service stamp, called the Rosa Parks Forever stamp debuted on her 100th birthday. Later that month, President Barack Obama unveiled a statue honoring Rosa in the United States Capitol building. He remembered her by saying “In a single moment, with the simplest of gestures, she helped change America and change the world… today, she takes her rightful place among those who shaped this nation’s course.”