Rosa Parks

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Rosa Parks (disambiguation).

Rosa Parks

Parks in 1955, with Martin Luther King Jr. in the

background
Born Rosa Louise McCauley
February 4, 1913
Tuskegee, Alabama, U.S.
Died October 24, 2005 (aged 92)
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Resting place Woodlawn Cemetery, Detroit
Occupation Civil rights activist
Known for Montgomery bus boycott
Movement Civil Rights Movement
Spouse(s) Raymond Parks
(m. 1932; died 1977)
Signature

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American
activist in the civil rights movement, best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus
boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "the first lady of civil rights" and
"the mother of the freedom movement".[1]
Parks became an NAACP activist in 1943, participating in several high-profile civil rights
campaigns. On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver
James F. Blake's order to vacate a row of 4 seats in the "colored" section in favor of a white
female passenger who had complained to the driver, once the "white" section was filled. [2]
Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation, [3] but the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) believed that she was the best candidate for
seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama
segregation laws, and she helped inspire the black community to boycott the Montgomery
buses for over a year. The case became bogged down in the state courts, but the federal
Montgomery bus lawsuit Browder v. Gayle resulted in a November 1956 decision that bus
segregation is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution.[4]

Parks's act of defiance and the Montgomery bus boycott became important symbols of the
movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation, and
organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon and Martin
Luther King Jr. At the time, Parks was employed as a seamstress at a local department
store and was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She had recently
attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for training activists for workers'
rights and racial equality. Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her
act; she was fired from her job and received death threats for years afterwards.[5] Shortly
after the boycott, she moved to Detroit, where she briefly found similar work. From 1965 to
1988, she served as secretary and receptionist to John Conyers, an African-American US
Representative. She was also active in the black power movement and the support of
political prisoners in the US.

After retirement, Parks wrote her autobiography and continued to insist that there was
more work to be done in the struggle for justice. [6] She received national recognition,
including the NAACP's 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the
Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's
National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman to lie in honor in
the Capitol Rotunda. California and Missouri commemorate Rosa Parks Day on her
birthday, February 4, while Ohio, Oregon, and Texas commemorate the anniversary of her
arrest, December 1.[7]

Early life
Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913, to
Leona (née Edwards), a teacher, and James McCauley, a carpenter. In addition to African
ancestry, one of Parks's great-grandfathers was Scots-Irish, and one of her great-
grandmothers was a part–Native American slave.[8][9][10][11] As a child, she suffered from
chronic tonsillitis and was often bedridden; the family could not afford to pay for an
operation to address the condition.[12]: 12 When her parents separated, she moved with her
mother to her grandparents' farm outside Pine Level, where her younger brother Sylvester
was born.[12]: 12–13 Rosa joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), a century-old
independent black denomination founded by free blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in
the early nineteenth century,[13][14] and remained a member throughout her life.[15]: 6

McCauley attended rural schools[16] until the age of eleven. Before that, her mother taught
her "a good deal about sewing." She started piecing quilts from around the age of six, as
her mother and grandmother were making quilts, she put her first quilt together by herself
around the age of ten, which was unusual, as quilting was mainly a family activity
performed when there was no field work or chores to be done. She learned more sewing in
school from the age of eleven; she sewed her own "first dress [she] could wear".[17] As a
student at the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery from 1925 to 1928, she took
academic and vocational courses. As the school closed in 1928, she transferred to Booker
T. Washington Junior High School for her final year. [15]: 10 Parks went on to a laboratory
school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes for secondary education,
but dropped out to care for her grandmother and later her mother, after they became
ill.[12]: 23–27 [18]

Around the turn of the 20th century, the former Confederate states had adopted new
constitutions and electoral laws that effectively disenfranchised black voters and, in
Alabama, many poor white voters as well. Under the white-established Jim Crow laws,
passed after Democrats regained control of southern legislatures, racial segregation was
imposed in public facilities and retail stores in the South, including public transportation.
Bus and train companies enforced seating policies with separate sections for blacks and
whites. School bus transportation was unavailable in any form for black schoolchildren in
the South, and black education was always underfunded.

Parks recalled going to elementary school in Pine Level, where school buses took white
students to their new school and black students had to walk to theirs:

I'd see the bus pass every day ... But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to
accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a
black world and a white world.[19]
Although Parks's autobiography recounts early memories of the kindness of white
strangers, she could not ignore the racism of her society. When the Ku Klux Klan marched
down the street in front of their house, Parks recalls her grandfather guarding the front door
with a shotgun.[20] The Montgomery Industrial School, founded and staffed by white
northerners for black children, was burned twice by arsonists. Its faculty was ostracized by
the white community.[18]

Repeatedly bullied by white children in her neighborhood, Parks often fought back
physically. She later said: "As far back as I remember, I could never think in terms of
accepting physical abuse without some form of retaliation if possible."[15]: 208

By January 1, 1946, Parks was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star.[21]

Early activism
In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, a barber from Montgomery.[15]: 13, 15 [22] He was a
member of the NAACP,[22] which at the time was collecting money to support the defense of
the Scottsboro Boys, a group of black men falsely accused of raping two white women.[23]: 690
Rosa took numerous jobs, ranging from domestic worker to hospital aide. At her husband's
urging, she finished her high school studies in 1933, at a time when fewer than 7% of
African Americans had a high-school diploma.

In December 1943, Parks became active in the civil rights movement, joined the
Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, and was elected secretary at a time when this was
considered a woman's job. She later said, "I was the only woman there, and they needed a
secretary, and I was too timid to say no." [24] She continued as secretary until 1957. She
worked for the local NAACP leader Edgar Nixon, even though he maintained that "Women
don't need to be nowhere but in the kitchen."[25] When Parks asked, "Well, what about me?",
he replied: "I need a secretary and you are a good one."[25]

In 1944, in her capacity as secretary, she investigated the gang-rape of Recy Taylor, a black
woman from Abbeville, Alabama. Parks and other civil rights activists organized "The
Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor", launching what the Chicago Defender
called "the strongest campaign for equal justice to be seen in a decade".[26] Parks continued
her work as an anti-rape activist five years later when she helped organize protests in
support of Gertrude Perkins, a black woman who was raped by two white Montgomery
police officers.[27]

Although never a member of the Communist Party, she attended meetings with her
husband. The notorious Scottsboro case had been brought to prominence by the
Communist Party.[28]