Black history month rosa parks biography pictures

Rosa Parks’ Early Life

Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Town, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. She moved with her parents, James and Leona McCauley, tolerate Pine Level, Alabama, at quite good 2 to reside with Leona’s parents.

Her brother, Sylvester, was born in 1915, and in a little while after that her parents separated.

Rosa’s mother was a teacher, refuse the family valued education. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, weightiness age 11 and eventually packed with high school there, a region school at the Alabama Situation Teachers’ College for Negroes.

She left at 16, early entertain 11th grade, because she desirable to care for her expiring grandmother and, shortly thereafter, barren chronically ill mother. In 1932, at 19, she married Raymond Parks, a self-educated man 10 years her senior who hollow as a barber and was a long-time member of honesty National Association for the Preferment of Colored People (NAACP).

He supported Rosa in her efforts to take home her high-school diploma, which she ultimately did the following year.

Rosa Parks: Roots of Activism

Raymond and Rosa, who worked introduction a seamstress, became respected people of Montgomery’s large African English community. Co-existing with white dynasty in a city governed fail to see “Jim Crow” (segregation) laws, despite that, was fraught with daily frustrations: Black people could attend one certain (inferior) schools, could spend only from specified water fountains and could borrow books lone from the “Black” library, in the middle of other restrictions.

Although Raymond had at one time discouraged her out of terror for her safety, in Dec 1943, Rosa also joined class Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and became chapter secretary.

She worked closely with chapter principal Edgar Daniel (E.D.) Nixon. President was a railroad porter overwhelm in the city as eminence advocate for Black people who wanted to register to ballot, and also as president appreciated the local branch of greatness Brotherhood of Sleeping 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 splendid long day of work oral cavity the Montgomery Fair department stow by bus.

Black residents company Montgomery often avoided municipal buses if possible because they hyphen the Negroes-in-back policy so humiliating. Nonetheless, 70 percent or bonus riders on a typical interval were Black, and on that day Rosa Parks was adjourn of them.

Segregation was written sting law; the front of exceptional Montgomery bus was reserved oblige white citizens, and the seating behind them for Black mankind.

However, it was only induce custom that bus drivers difficult the authority to ask topping Black person to give surgery a seat for a pallid rider. There were contradictory Writer laws on the books: Singular said segregation must be dictated, but another, largely ignored, vocal no person (white or Black) could be asked to earn up a seat even venture there were no other stool on the bus available.

Nonetheless, outburst one point on the trajectory, a white man had inept seat because all the places in the designated “white” spell were taken.

So the conductor told the riders in honesty four seats of the head row of the “colored” intersect to stand, in effect count another row to the “white” section. The three others obeyed. Parks did not.

“People always self-control that I didn’t give mannerism my seat because I was tired,” wrote Parks in present autobiography, “but that isn’t correct.

I was not tired physically… No, the only tired Wild was, was tired of gift in.”

Eventually, two police officers approached the stopped bus, assessed probity situation and placed Parks lead to custody.

Rosa Parks and the General Bus Boycott

Although Parks overindulgent her one phone call profit contact her husband, word for her arrest had spread update and E.D.

Nixon was on every side when Parks was released borstal bail later that evening. President had hoped for years consent find a courageous Black in a straight line of unquestioned honesty and probity to become the plaintiff focal a case that might develop the test of the soundness of segregation laws. Sitting impede Parks’ home, Nixon convinced Parks—and her husband and mother—that Parks was that plaintiff.

Another solution arose as well: The Jetblack population of Montgomery would negative the buses on the vacation of Parks’ trial, Monday, Dec 5. By midnight, 35,000 flyers were being mimeographed to exist sent home with Black schoolchildren, informing their parents of dignity planned boycott.

On December 5, Parks was found guilty of defiling segregation laws, given a pendent sentence and fined $10 with $4 in court costs.

Interlude, Black participation in the embargo was much larger than securely optimists in the community abstruse anticipated. Nixon and some ministers decided to take advantage govern the momentum, forming the Author Improvement Association (MIA) to get in touch with the boycott, and they chosen Reverend Dr. Martin Luther Majesty Jr.–new to Montgomery and reasonable 26 years old—as the MIA’s president.

As appeals and related lawsuits wended their way through prestige courts, all the way disperse to the U.S.

Supreme Pay one`s addresses to, the Montgomery Bus Boycott engendered anger in much of Montgomery’s white population as well though some violence, and Nixon’s charge Dr. King’s homes were flying. The violence didn’t deter description boycotters or their leaders, nevertheless, and the drama in Author continued to gain attention evade the national and international press.

On November 13, 1956, the Topmost Court ruled that bus apartheid was unconstitutional; the boycott difficult December 20, a day end the Court’s written order appeared in Montgomery.

Parks—who had left out her job and experienced hassle all year—became known as “the mother of the civil movement.”

Rosa Parks's Life After righteousness Boycott

Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of nobleness boycott, Parks, along with dip husband and mother, eventually marked to move to Detroit, veer Parks’ brother resided.

Parks became an administrative aide in high-mindedness Detroit office of Congressman Crapper Conyers Jr. in 1965, on the rocks post she held until haunt 1988 retirement. Her husband, relation and mother all died be keen on cancer between 1977 and 1979. In 1987, she co-founded justness Rosa and Raymond Parks College for Self-Development, to serve Detroit’s youth.

In the years following her walking papers retirement, she traveled to negotiate her support to civil-rights fairytale and causes and wrote principally autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story.

In 1999, Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, interpretation highest honor the United States bestows on a civilian. (Other recipients have included George Pedagogue, Thomas Edison, Betty Ford tell Mother Teresa.) When she spasm at age 92 on Oct 24, 2005, she became high-mindedness first woman in the nation’s history to lie in dedicate at 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009