Rosa Parks

Biography Occupation: Civil Rights Activist Born: February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama Died: October 24, 2005 in Detroit, Michigan Best known for: Montgomery Bus Boycott

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (1913 – 2005) was an African American civil right’s activist and seamstress whom the U.S. Congress dubbed the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement”. Parks is famous for her refusal on 1 December 1955, to obey bus driver James Blake’s demand that she relinquish her seat to a white man. Her subsequent arrest and trial for this act of civil disobedience triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history, and launched Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the organisers of the boycott, to the forefront of the civil rights movement. Her role in American history earned her an iconic status in American culture, and her actions have left an enduring legacy for civil rights movements around the world.

Rosa Parks Early Life Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. Her ancestors included both Irish- Scottish lineage and also a great grandmother who was a slave. She attended local rural schools, and after the age of 11, the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery. However, she later had to opt out of school to look after her grandmother. As a child, Rosa became aware of the segregation which was deeply embedded in Alabama. She experienced deep rooted racism and became conscious of the different opportunities faced by white and black children. She also recalls seeing a Klu Klux Klan march go past her house – where her father stood outside with a shotgun. Due to the Jim Crow laws, most black voters were effectively disenfranchised.

You must move for this White man. No, I have the right to Sit wherever I want

Rosa Parks was not the first person to refuse to give up their sit to a white person.Claudette Colvin was the first.Both were arrested and brought to jail. It’s one of the most famous moments in modern American civil rights history: On a chilly December evening in 1955, on a busy street in the capital of Alabama, a 42-year-old seamstress boarded a segregated city bus to return home after a long day of work, taking a seat near the middle, just behind the front “white” section. At the next stop, more passengers got on. When every seat in the white section was taken, the bus driver ordered the black passengers in the middle row to stand so a white man could sit. The seamstress refused.

Quotes from Rosa Parks The time had just come when I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed, I suppose. I had decided that I would have to know, once and for all, what rights I had as a human being, and a citizen. I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear. The only tired I was, was tired of giving in. Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again. Each person must live their life as a model for others.

More Quotes Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others. Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome. I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free. I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people. All I was doing was trying to get home from work. Whatever my individual desires were to be free, I was not alone. There were many others who felt the same way.

Change for now and forever more Equality from now on and forever more Civil Rights for Black people People can sit wherever they want