Who was Rosa Parks?
Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1913. She joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943 and became its volunteer secretary. In summer 1955 she attended a workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. On 1 December 1955 she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger and was arrested, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott began on the day of her trial. After the boycott ended in December 1956, she lost her job and moved to Detroit, where she worked in the office of Congressman John Conyers until 1988. She died in Detroit in 2005 at age 92.
Political views
- She joined the Montgomery NAACP in 1943 and served as secretary to E. D. Nixon until 1957.Source: newworldencyclopedia.org
- By 1949 she advised the NAACP Youth Council, whose members challenged Jim Crow by checking out books from whites-only libraries.Source: kinginstitute.stanford.edu
- She investigated the rape of Recy Taylor in Henry County, Alabama, and attended meetings about the murder of Emmett Till.Source: biography.com
- In summer 1955 she attended the Highlander workshop on racial desegregation, where fellow participant Septima Clark encouraged her.Source: kinginstitute.stanford.edu
- She was not the first to defy the bus law. Claudette Colvin was arrested nine months earlier, but Parks's arrest set off a mass boycott.Source: kinginstitute.stanford.edu
- Her arrest was part of a planned effort by activists, not a spontaneous act. She explained that the only tired she was, was tired of giving in.Source: newworldencyclopedia.org
- During the boycott she worked as a dispatcher coordinating rides, and she was indicted with Martin Luther King Jr. and over 80 others.Source: kinginstitute.stanford.edu
- In Detroit she spoke out against housing discrimination and police abuse, served on the Planned Parenthood board and called Malcolm X her personal hero.Source: biography.com
Legacy
Parks is honored as the Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal. Admirers credit her with a calm act that helped turn a local protest into a national campaign. Some historians say the popular image of a tired seamstress hides her years as an organizer, and that Colvin and others defied the bus law before her. She and her husband lost their jobs and received death threats, and she moved north to Detroit, where she kept campaigning against housing discrimination and police abuse.