On December 1, 1955, she made history when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. This action was the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. She has been called “Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement”.
Born in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4, 1913 to a carpenter father and a teacher mother, Rosa Louise McCauley would grow up to become the historic icon, Rosa Parks. Her mother home schooled her until the age of eleven. Later on, she attended a laboratory school to receive her secondary education. She ended up having to drop out to take care of her grandmother and mother who had become ill.
Rosa married a barber by the name of Raymond Parks in 1932. Eleven years later, she became active in the civil rights movement. She was also part of the NAACP.
On the day of that famous bus ride, Rosa left work and boarded the bus in downtown Montgomery. After she had paid for her ride, she went and sat down in the first row reserved in the “colored” section. At the third stop, several white passengers boarded the bus. The driver noticing that the white section was full, went to move the sign that separated the two sections. The driver then demanded that the four black passengers in the new white section move back. Three of them complied and moved. Parks did not. She stayed in her seat and moved towards the window so another passenger would be able to sit next to her. The police were called and she was arrested.
In her autobiography titled My Story she stated,
“People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired,
but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I
usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some
people have an image of me being old then. I was forty-two. No, the
only tired I was, was tired of giving in”.
Ms Parks suffered somewhat after her arrest and then becoming an icon of the Civil Rights movement. She ended up losing her job and her husband quit his because he was not allowed to talk about his wife or her case.
Years later, Rosa Parks would receive many honors and awards. One includes The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the US Executive Branch was presented to her in 1996 by former President Clinton. In 1999, Parks was named one of the 20 most influential and iconic figures in the twentieth century by TIME magazine.
On October 24, 2005, the iconic Rosa Parks died in her apartment in Detroit, Michigan. Three days later, Montgomery and Detroit city officials stated that the front seats of their city buses would be reserved in honor of Parks. Her casket was brought to the US Capital Rotunda to lie in honor. This made her the first woman and the second African-American to ever receive this honor.
Rosa Parks' funeral service lasted seven hours. Michigan National Guard laid the American flag on her casket which was taken to the Detroit Woodlawn Cemetery in a horse drawn hearse.
