Rosa Parks was born on Febuary 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama to James McCauley and Leona McCauley. She also had one brother named Syvester. When Rosa was two her father abandoned them. A few years later when Rosa's parents and grandparents grew ill, Rosa had to do all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, and sewing.When Rosa was twenty she married Raymond Parks. She then took up sewing as a job. She also became a member of theNAACP. Later she joined a group called the Voters League.She helped black citizens pass tests that had been set up to make it difficult for them to pass.
On the 1st of December 1955, Mrs. Rosa Parks, aAfrican-American seamstress, was arrested in Montgomery,Alabama for not standing and letting a white bus rider take her seat. It was an "established rule" in the American south (at that time) that African-American riders had to sit at the backof the bus. African-American riders were also expected to surrender their seat to a white bus rider if it was needed. When asked to move to let a white bus rider be seated Mrs. Parks refused. She did not argue and she did not move.The police were called and Mrs. Parks was arrested. She went to court and was let off with a fourteen dollar fine. Rosa didn't pay her fine and a bus boycott was started. Since 70% of the people that rode the bus were African American, the company lost a lot of money. After the bus boycott ended the busses were desegrated. Soon after the incident, in 1955 Rosa moved to Detroit. Rosa was a major factor in the fight for equal rights. She had enough courage not to give up her seat to white person. She also helped start a boycott that led to equal rights. Rosa Parks has received the NAACP's Springarn Medal, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Award. After the death of her husband in 1987, she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, which offers guidance to young blacks and sponsors an annual summer program, called Pathways to Freedom. The program enables young people from many different ethnic backgrounds to tour the country in buses, under adult supervision, and learn the history of their country and of the civil rights movement. The purpose of the Institute is to motivate and direct kids to achieve their highest potential, and to teach more people about important issues that affect the future of the world.
