 Way Back When
Rosa Parks & Civil Rights
published: February 2008
By Sheri Collins, Contributing Writer
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Way back when on February 4, 1913, Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. She grew up, married a barber named Raymond Parks and worked as a seamstress in Montgomery. With Raymond's encouragement, she returned to school and became one of the few black people with a high school diploma at that time.
In those days, laws in the South called "Jim Crow" laws did not allow white people and black people to sit in the same places in public, or even attend the same schools and churches. So, in 1943, Rosa Parks became a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and began working to make life better for black people.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa became famous when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. Even after bus driver James Blake threatened to call the police and have her arrested, she wouldn't move. She was arrested and fined. This event motivated local black leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., to begin a boycott of the bus company that would last more than a year and severely hurt the bus company financially. On November 13, 1956, the United States Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation on buses, and the boycott ended.
Her actions became a symbol of the power of nonviolent protest and led to her being called the "Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement." Later she said, "I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind."
She and Raymond eventually moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she worked for African-American U.S. Representative John Conyers as a secretary and receptionist for his congressional office. On October 24, 2005, she died at the age of 92.
Sheri Collins is a contributing writer for Kidsville News! Sources: Encyclopaedia
Britannica Online: www.britannica.com/eb/article-9432601; Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks.
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