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Birth
Rosa Parks was born February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama, to parents Leona Edwards and James McCauley. -
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Education
Rosa Parks was homeschooled until the age of 11, when she began attending the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery. She was forced to drop out of high school in order to take care of her ailing grandmother. Her childhood was greatly affected by Jim Crow laws and segregation in the South. -
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Marriage
Parks (née McCauley) married Raymond Parks in 1932. They were married until his death on August 19, 1977. Raymond Parks was a self-educated civil rights activist, as well as a barber. -
Further Education
Despite dropping out of high school at age 16 to care for her grandmother, Rosa eventually went back to school and earned her high school diploma in 1933. She never attended college. -
Participation in the NAACP
Both Rosa Parks and her husband Raymond were active members in the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). In 1943, Parks was appointed secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP. She also served as the youth leader for the Montgomery branch. -
Career
Parks worked as a seamstress in a Montgomery department store for many years. It was when she was riding home from work one day on a public bus when she did her famous bus boycott. -
Bus Boycott
When she was 42 years old at the time, on her way home from work, Parks refused to listen to bus driver James F. Blake when he ordered her to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. She was not the first person to do so, but she is by far the most famous. -
Significance in US History
The bus boycott is Parks' most well-known achievement, mostly due to the aftermath that resulted. After this, the civil rights and the bus boycott movement exploded. Parks, along with other civil rights activists, began spreading the news more, leading to advancements in the black civil rights movement that extended into the 1960s. -
Institute for Self-Development
Along with long time friend Elaine Eason Steele, Parks formed the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, which provided guidance to young African Americans. She created it in honor of her husband, who passed away several years earlier. -
Death
Parks died on October 24, 2005, in Detroit, Michigan. She died of natural causes at the age of 92. Her legend lives on, and she is often hailed as the "mother of the civil rights movement." She is buried in Detroit, Michigan.
