Rosa McCauley, better known as Rosa Parks, was born on February 4, 1913 to a teacher and a carpenter. She grew up with her mother and grandparents on a farm outside of Montgomery where she would stay up with her grandfather, who would guard against roving bands of the Ku Klux Klan. It was when she went to school that Rosa began to see that there were two different worlds in the South: the white world where students rode a bus to school and the black world where students had to walk to school.
Photo:nwhm.org
In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, the love of her life. When they married, he was working for the NAACP, raising money for the Scottsboro Nine trial. Two years later, Rosa joined the NAACP as well and was elected secretary. This began her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and prepared her for the momentous arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus.
The Montgomery Bus incident and subsequent bus boycott launched Rosa to prominence but this resulted in trying times for her and her husband. She lost her job and her husband quit his when his boss forbade him from talking about his wife and her arrest. In 1957, she and Raymond moved north, first to Hampton, Virginia and then to Detroit.
Even when the Civil Right Movement of the 1960s came to an end, Parks continued to fight for civil rights. She focused on housing issues in Detroit as well as access to education. In 1977, Raymond Parks died. They never had children and Rosa never remarried.
October 24, 2005, at the age of 92, Rosa Parks died. Detroit and Montgomery honored her by draping in black the front seats of all city buses. Her body lay in state in the US Capitol, the first woman so honored, before returning to Detroit where she was buried beside her husband. Prior to her death, Rosa Parks placed a headstone on her future resting place with the inscription "Rosa L. Parks, wife, 1913-"
Photo: nytimes.com
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