Rosa Parks was born in 1913 in Alabama and faced racial segregation throughout her life, including in schools and public transportation. In 1955, on a bus in Montgomery, Parks refused to give up her seat for a white passenger, leading to her arrest. This sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by Martin Luther King Jr., and paved the way for the end of segregation in the United States. Parks received numerous honors for her role in the civil rights movement and worked as a seamstress and aide until her retirement in 1988, passing away in 2005 at the age of 92.

1. Created by: Benedict S. Gombocz

2.  Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February
4, 1913, to James McCauley (a carpenter) and Leona
Edwards (a teacher).
 When her parents split, she and her younger brother
Sylvester moved with their mother to their grandmother’s
farm in Pine Level, Alabama.
 Home-schooled until age 11, Rosa moved on to Alabama
State Teachers College for Negroes to receive secondary
education.
 Was forced to quit secondary education subsequently to
care for her grandmother and then her mother.

3.  In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, a barber in
Montgomery and a member of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
 Rosa Parks had a variety of jobs from being a domestic
worker to a housekeeper to a seamstress to a hospital aide;
she completed her high school education, with her
husband’s support, in 1933.
 She joined the NAACP in 1943; was elected to be volunteer
secretary to the president of the association, Edgar Nixon.

4.  Parks had seen the segregation between whites and blacks
throughout her life – the life of dealing with segregation was
marked by such discrimination against blacks on a daily base on
every level of existence; she had witnessed it in schools and
colleges, in the workplace and even in public transport.
 The system of segregation was very unusual in public buses; the
first four rows of seats were reserved for whites and the rest were
for blacks.
 A moveable board was placed in the bus to indicate the sections
reserved for each race.
 When whites came on the bus in larger numbers, the board was
moved back and additional seats were available for whites;
blacks vacating those seats had to either move to the back or
simply get off the bus.

5.  On December 1, 1955, Parks and four other people were
sitting in the front of the black section of the bus.
 As more whites got on the bus, the driver moved the board
back and asked Parks and these four to give up their seats;
the other four complied, but Parks refused to get up, and
the driver called the police and had her arrested.
 Parks’ arrest marked a nationwide movement to boycott
the city buses, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which started
the career of none other than Martin Luther King, Jr.; this
paved the way for the end of the racist and discriminatory
attitude of the United States of America.

6.  On November 13, 1956, the United States Supreme Court passed a court
order ruling that racial segregation on buses is unconstitutional; the
order reached Montgomery on December 20, 1956, and the bus boycott
ended on the subsequent day.
 During the days of the trial and for many days afterwards, Parks and
her NAACP associates, including Martin Luther King, Jr., were often
attacked by segregationists.
 Life for Parks and her husband became very hard; both lost their jobs
moved to Hampton, Virginia, and later to Detroit.
 Parks worked as a seamstress and was appointed secretary and
receptionist in the congressional office of the African-American U.S.
Representative John Conyers in 1965; she worked there until her
retirement in 1988.
 Raymond Parks died of cancer in 1977; in 1987, Rosa Parks and Elaine
Eason Steele co-founded Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self
Development.

7.  In 1992, Mrs. Parks released her autobiography titled Rosa Parks:
My Story; in 1995, another of her memoirs titled Quiet Strength
was published.
 The former details Mrs. Parks’ life until her decision to refuse to
give up her seat on the bus; the latter focuses on the part played
by faith in Parks’ life.
 Late in her life, she received a lot of honors, most notably the
Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bill Clinton in 1996.
 Mrs. Parks died on October 24, 2005, in Detroit, after a battle
with progressive dementia; she was 92.
 Her biography is a photo of a woman who had the strength and
courage to defend what was right and just.

8.  http://www.buzzle.com/articles/rosa-parks-
biography.html