About Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks - Biography
Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist best known for her refusal to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott and galvanizing the civil rights movement.
Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama, to James and Leona McCauley. With her mother's support, Parks completed high school in 1933 and moved to Montgomery, where she met and married Raymond Parks in 1932. She joined the Montgomery NAACP chapter in 1943, serving as youth leader and secretary to E.D. Nixon until 1957. Parks's early activism included work on the Scottsboro Boys case and organizing the 'Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor.' On December 1, 1955, her arrest for refusing to surrender her bus seat ignited the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott. After losing her job and facing threats, Parks moved to Detroit in 1957, working as a seamstress before becoming secretary and receptionist for U.S. Representative John Conyers. She founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development in 1987 and published her autobiography 'Rosa Parks: My Story' in 1992. Parks died on October 24, 2005.
Learn from Rosa when you're...
- Facing racial segregation or discriminatory laws
- Building momentum for nonviolent mass movements
- Investigating and publicizing cases of racial violence
- Overcoming retaliation or arrest for activism
- Mobilizing community support through grassroots meetings
- Addressing intersectional oppression of race and gender
- Preparing for long-term campaigns
- Cultivating 'quiet strength' amid personal hardship
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