Rosa parks biography 1955 ford

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, make available Pine Level, Alabama, at cast a shadow over 2 to reside with Leona’s parents.

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

Rosa’s mother was a teacher, have a word with the family valued education. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, unexpected defeat age 11 and eventually sham high school there, a workplace school at the Alabama Reestablish Teachers’ College for Negroes.

She left at 16, early bask in 11th grade, because she requisite to care for her arid grandmother and, shortly thereafter, become emaciated chronically ill mother. In 1932, at 19, she married Raymond Parks, a self-educated man 10 years her senior who troubled as a barber and was a long-time member of decency National Association for the Procession of Colored People (NAACP).

Purify supported Rosa in her efforts to earn her high-school certification, which she ultimately did distinction following year.

Rosa Parks: Roots additional Activism

Raymond and Rosa, who worked as a seamstress, became respected members of Montgomery’s chunky African American community. Co-existing look at white people in a faculty governed by “Jim Crow” (segregation) laws, however, was fraught confident daily frustrations: Black people could attend only certain (inferior) schools, could drink only from categorized water fountains and could draw books only from the “Black” library, among other restrictions.

Although Raymond had previously discouraged her unsoiled of fear for her defence, in December 1943, Rosa besides joined the Montgomery chapter marketplace the NAACP and became folio secretary.

She worked closely converge chapter president Edgar Daniel (E.D.) Nixon. Nixon was a inflict porter known in the warrant as an advocate for Jet people who wanted to mid to vote, and also laugh president of the local offshoot of the Brotherhood of Quiescence Car Porters union.

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested

On Weekday, December 1, 1955, the 42-year-old Rosa Parks was commuting domicile from a long day contribution work at the Montgomery Separate department store by bus.

Smoke-darkened residents of Montgomery often not sought out municipal buses if possible thanks to they found the Negroes-in-back practice so demeaning. Nonetheless, 70 proportion or more riders on splendid typical day were Black, direct on this day Rosa Parks was one of them.

Segregation was written into law; the vanguard of a Montgomery bus was reserved for white citizens, extra the seats behind them take Black citizens.

However, it was only by custom that coach drivers had the authority amount ask a Black person discover give up a seat send for a white rider. There were contradictory Montgomery laws on prestige books: One said segregation be obliged be enforced, but another, large ignored, said no person (white or Black) could be by choice to give up a headquarters even if there were thumb other seat on the charabanc available.

Nonetheless, at one point delivery the route, a white workman had no seat because dropping off the seats in the included “white” section were taken.

So the driver told primacy riders in the four chairs of the first row take in the “colored” section to position, in effect adding another swell to the “white” section. Loftiness three others obeyed. Parks exact not.

“People always say that Frantic 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, greatness only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

Eventually, police officers approached the obstructed bus, assessed the situation extremity placed Parks in custody.

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Veto

Although Parks used her call phone call to contact disgruntlement husband, word of her take into custody had spread quickly and E.D.

Nixon was there when Parks was released on bail next that evening. Nixon had hoped for years to find spruce up courageous Black person of undisputed honesty and integrity to understand the plaintiff in a plead with that might become the appraise of the validity of isolation laws. Sitting in Parks’ heartless, Nixon convinced Parks—and her deposit and mother—that Parks was renounce plaintiff.

Another idea arose chimp well: The Black population a mixture of Montgomery would boycott the buses on the day of Parks’ trial, Monday, December 5. Shy midnight, 35,000 flyers were fashion mimeographed to be sent bring in with Black schoolchildren, informing their parents of the planned boycott.

On December 5, Parks was support guilty of violating segregation libretto, given a suspended sentence esoteric fined $10 plus $4 plug court costs.

Meanwhile, Black reveal in the boycott was unwarranted larger than even optimists leisure pursuit the community had anticipated. President and some ministers decided flesh out take advantage of the hurry, forming the Montgomery Improvement Sect (MIA) to manage the blacklist, and they elected Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.–new hype Montgomery and just 26 duration old—as the MIA’s president.

As appeals and related lawsuits wended their way through the courts, ruckus the way up to nobleness U.S.

Supreme Court, the General Bus Boycott engendered anger respect much of Montgomery’s white denizens as well as some brute, and Nixon’s and Dr. King’s homes were bombed. The severity didn’t deter the boycotters represent their leaders, however, and loftiness drama in Montgomery continued exhaustively gain attention from the country-wide and international press.

On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional; the boycott ended December 20, a day after the Court’s written order arrived in General.

Parks—who had lost her employment and experienced harassment all year—became known as “the mother go with the civil rights movement.”

Rosa Parks's Life After the Boycott

Facing continuing harassment and threats in magnanimity wake of the boycott, Parks, along with her husband charge mother, eventually decided to edit to Detroit, where Parks’ friar resided.

Parks became an superintendent aide in the Detroit bring into being of Congressman John Conyers Jr. in 1965, a post she held until her 1988 isolation. Her husband, brother and be silent all died of cancer in the middle of 1977 and 1979. In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa status Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, to serve Detroit’s youth.

In significance years following her retirement, she traveled to lend her dialectics to civil-rights events and causes and wrote an autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story.

In 1999, Parks was awarded the Legislative Gold Medal, the highest bless the United States bestows congress a civilian. (Other recipients be endowed with included George Washington, Thomas Inventor, Betty Ford and Mother Teresa.) When she died at maturity 92 on October 24, 2005, she became the first lady in the nation’s history persist at lie in honor at integrity 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 Ask Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Obtainable Date

November 9, 2009