77 Facts About Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott.

On December 1,1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F Blake's order to vacate a row of four seats in the "colored" section in favor of a White passenger, once the "White" section was filled.

Rosa Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation, but the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People believed that she was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws, and she helped inspire the Black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year.

Rosa Parks's act of defiance and the Montgomery bus boycott became important symbols of the movement.

Rosa Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation, and organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr.

At the time, Rosa Parks was employed as a seamstress at a local department store and was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP.

Rosa Parks had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for training activists for workers' rights and racial equality.

Rosa Parks was active in the Black Power movement and the support of political prisoners in the US.

Rosa Parks received national recognition, including the NAACP's 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall.

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4,1913, to Leona, a teacher, and James McCauley, a carpenter.

Rosa Parks was small as a child and suffered poor health with chronic tonsillitis.

Rosa Parks grew up on a farm with her maternal grandparents, mother, and younger brother Sylvester.

Rosa Parks started piecing quilts from around the age of six, as her mother and grandmother were making quilts, she put her first quilt together by herself around the age of ten, which was unusual, as quilting was mainly a family activity performed when there was no field work or chores to be done.

Rosa Parks learned more sewing in school from the age of eleven; she sewed her own "first dress [she] could wear".

Rosa Parks went on to a laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes for secondary education, but dropped out in order to care for her grandmother and later her mother, after they became ill.

Rosa Parks recalled going to elementary school in Pine Level, where school buses took White students to their new school and Black students had to walk to theirs:.

Repeatedly bullied by White children in her neighborhood, Rosa Parks often fought back physically.

In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, a barber from Montgomery.

Rosa Parks was a member of the NAACP, which at the time was collecting money to support the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, a group of Black men falsely accused of raping two White women.

Rosa Parks took numerous jobs, ranging from domestic worker to hospital aide.

In December 1943, Rosa Parks became active in the civil rights movement, joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, and was elected secretary at a time when this was considered a woman's job.

On November 27,1955, four days before she would make her stand on the bus, Rosa Parks attended a mass meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery that addressed this case, as well as the recent murders of the activists George W Lee and Lamar Smith.

One day in 1943, Rosa Parks boarded a bus and paid the fare.

Rosa Parks then moved to a seat, but driver James F Blake told her to follow city rules and enter the bus again from the back door.

When Rosa Parks exited the vehicle, Blake drove off without her.

Rosa Parks waited for the next bus, determined never to ride with Blake again.

Rosa Parks paid her fare and sat in an empty seat in the first row of back seats reserved for Blacks in the "colored" section.

The bus driver moved the "colored" section sign behind Rosa Parks and demanded that four Black people give up their seats in the middle section so that the White passengers could sit.

Rosa Parks moved, but toward the window seat; she did not get up to move to the redesignated colored section.

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her.

Rosa Parks was charged with a violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, segregation law of the Montgomery City code, although technically she had not taken a White-only seat; she had been in a colored section.

Rosa Parks did not originate the idea of protesting segregation with a bus sit-in.

The next day, Rosa Parks was tried on charges of disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance.

Rosa Parks was securely married and employed, was regarded as possessing a quiet and dignified demeanor, and was politically savvy.

Rosa Parks was not included as a plaintiff in the Browder decision because the attorney Fred Gray concluded the courts would perceive they were attempting to circumvent her prosecution on her charges working their way through the Alabama state court system.

Rosa Parks played an important part in raising international awareness of the plight of African Americans and the civil rights struggle.

Rosa Parks's husband lost his job as a barber at Maxwell Air Force Base after his boss forbade him to talk about his wife or the legal case.

In 1957, Raymond and Rosa Parks left Montgomery for Hampton, Virginia; mostly because she was unable to find work.

Rosa Parks disagreed with King and other leaders of Montgomery's struggling civil rights movement about how to proceed, and was constantly receiving death threats.

The City of Detroit attempted to cultivate a progressive reputation, but Rosa Parks encountered numerous signs of discrimination against African-Americans.

Rosa Parks rendered crucial assistance in the first campaign for Congress by John Conyers.

Rosa Parks persuaded Martin Luther King, who was generally reluctant to endorse local candidates, to appear with Conyers, thereby boosting the novice candidate's profile.

Rosa Parks held this position until she retired in 1988.

Rosa Parks visited schools, hospitals, senior citizen facilities, and other community meetings and kept Conyers grounded in community concerns and activism.

Rosa Parks participated in activism nationally during the mid-1960s, traveling to support the Selma-to-Montgomery Marches, the Freedom Now Party, and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization.

Rosa Parks befriended Malcolm X, who she regarded as a personal hero.

Rosa Parks herself lived in a neighborhood, Virginia Park, which had been compromised by highway construction and urban renewal.

Rosa Parks lived just a mile from the center of the riot that took place in Detroit in 1967, and she considered housing discrimination a major factor that provoked the disorder.

Rosa Parks served on a "people's tribunal" on August 30,1967, investigating the killing of three young men by police during the 1967 Detroit uprising, in what came to be known as the Algiers Motel incident.

Rosa Parks helped form the Virginia Park district council to help rebuild the area.

Rosa Parks took part in the Black power movement, attending the Philadelphia Black Power conference, and the Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana.

Rosa Parks supported and visited the Black Panther school in Oakland.

Rosa Parks helped found the Detroit chapter of the Joanne Little Defense Committee, and worked in support of the Wilmington 10, the RNA 11, and Gary Tyler.

Rosa Parks's family was plagued with illness; she and her husband had suffered stomach ulcers for years and both required hospitalization.

In spite of her fame and constant speaking engagements, Rosa Parks was not a wealthy woman.

Rosa Parks donated most of the money from speaking to civil rights causes, and lived on her staff salary and her husband's pension.

Rosa Parks's husband died of throat cancer on August 19,1977, and her brother, her only sibling, died of cancer that November.

Rosa Parks learned from a newspaper of the death of Fannie Lou Hamer, once a close friend.

Rosa Parks decided to move with her mother into an apartment for senior citizens.

Rosa Parks co-founded the Rosa L Parks Scholarship Foundation for college-bound high school seniors, to which she donated most of her speaker fees.

Rosa Parks served on the Board of Advocates of Planned Parenthood.

Unrelated to her activism, Rosa Parks loaned quilts of her own making to an exhibit at Michigan State University of quilts by African-American residents of Michigan.

At age 81, Rosa Parks was robbed and assaulted in her home in central Detroit on August 30,1994.

Rosa Parks requested a reward and when Parks paid him, he demanded more.

Rosa Parks was treated at Detroit Receiving Hospital for facial injuries and swelling on the right side of her face.

In 1999, Rosa Parks filmed a cameo appearance for the television series Touched by an Angel.

In 2002, Rosa Parks received an eviction notice from her $1,800 per month apartment for non-payment of rent.

Rosa Parks was incapable of managing her own financial affairs by this time due to age-related physical and mental decline.

Rosa Parks's rent was paid from a collection taken by Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit.

Rosa Parks died of natural causes on October 24,2005, at the age of 92, in her apartment on the east side of Detroit.

Rosa Parks was survived by her sister-in-law, 13 nieces and nephews and their families, and several cousins, most of them residents of Michigan or Alabama.

Rosa Parks' coffin was flown to Montgomery and taken in a horse-drawn hearse to the St Paul African Methodist Episcopal church, where she lay in repose at the altar on October 29,2005, dressed in the uniform of a church deaconess.

Since the founding of the practice in 1852, Rosa Parks was the 31st person, the first American who had not been a US government official, and the second private person to be honored in this way.

Rosa Parks was the first woman and the second Black person to lie in honor in the Capitol.

Rosa Parks was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery in the chapel's mausoleum.

Rosa Parks was arrested sitting in the same row Obama is in, but on the opposite side.

The No 2857 bus on which Rosa Parks was riding before her arrest, is a museum exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum.