Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a racially segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama . Her simple action led to the successful Montgomery bus boycott by African American riders that forced the city to desegregate its bus system.

Parks was born Rosa McCauley on February 4, 1913. For most of her childhood, she lived with her mother, brother, and grandparents in Pine Level, Alabama. Her mother and grandparents worked hard to provide her with the necessities of life while attempting to shield her from the harsh realities of racial segregation . Parks attended the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, graduated from the all-black Booker T. Washington High School in 1928, and attended Alabama State Teachers College in Montgomery for a short time.

Active in the early civil rights movement

In 1943, Parks became one of the first women to join the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She worked as a youth adviser and served as secretary for the local group from 1943 to 1956. In addition, she worked with the Montgomery Voters League to increase black voter registration. During the summer of 1955, Parks accepted a scholarship for a workshop for community leaders on school integration at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee . It was an important experience for Parks. She learned the practical skills of organizing and mobilizing and experienced harmony among blacks and whites that motivated her activism for years to come.

December 1, 1955

City buses in Montgomery were segregated in the 1950s. White passengers were given the front seats. Even if no white riders boarded, African Americans were not allowed to sit in those seats. If white passengers filled their allotted seats, black riders—who had to pay the same amount of bus fare—had to give their seats to the whites. Bus drivers were instructed to have African Americans who disobeyed the rules arrested and fined.

Parks was working at a department store as a tailor's assistant in 1955 and took the bus home from work, as usual, on the night of December 1. She took a seat directly behind the white section. When the white section filled, she was asked to yield her seat to a white passenger. Parks refused. The bus driver threatened to have her arrested but she remained where she was. He stopped the bus and Parks was arrested.

The boycott

Certainly Parks's case was not unique; African Americans had been arrested for disobeying the segregation laws many times before. However, the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education , which ruled that segregation in public schools was illegal, had encouraged African Americans to fight more boldly for the end of racial segregation in every area of American life. Parks, who was active in the civil rights movement , knew that her action on the bus could be the start of a protest movement in Montgomery. Indeed, when news of Parks's arrest spread, NAACP officials and Montgomery church leaders quickly decided it was time to take action. They asked Montgomery's black riders—who comprised over 70 percent of the bus company's business—to stop riding the buses until the company revised its policies toward African American riders.

Meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the Montgomery ministers and their congregations formed the Montgomery Improvement Association and elected the young Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) as president. Parks was actively involved in sustaining the boycott and for a time served on the executive committee of the Montgomery Improvement Association. For over a year, black people in Montgomery carpooled, took taxis, and walked to work. The boycott hurt the bus companies financially, brought the nation's attention to the problem of segregation, and resulted in a ruling by the Supreme Court that segregation on city buses was unconstitutional. It was one of the early successes in the African American civil rights movement, encouraging the nonviolent protest movement that followed.

Life in Detroit

Parks lost her job as a result of the boycott and moved to Detroit, Michigan , in 1957. There, John Conyers (1929–), an African American member of the U.S. House of Representatives, employed her as his receptionist and then staff assistant for twenty-five years. She continued her work with the NAACP and another civil rights organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). She also served as a deaconess at the Saint Matthew African Methodist Episcopal Church. She participated in numerous marches and rallies, including the 1965 Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches .

Parks became known as the mother of the civil rights movement. She won many awards, including, in 1999, the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor. In December 2000, the 50,000-square-foot Rosa Parks Library and Museum, featuring a life-size bronze sculpture of Parks, opened in Montgomery.

Parks died at the age of ninety-two in Detroit. The cities of Montgomery and Detroit both honored her passing by reserving the front seats of the city buses with black ribbons. Her casket was taken by city bus to Washington, D.C. , where it lay in state in the Capitol. More than fifty thousand people lined up to view the casket. Thousands more showed up to honor her funeral procession in Detroit.