Rosa Parks
Seamstress and Activist
Even though the Civil War ended fifty years before Rosa Parks was born, freeing all slaves, we are still a long way from equality in this country, and it was even worse when Rosa was alive and segregation was enforced strictly in the south. Black people could attend only certain (inferior) schools, drink only from specified water fountains, borrow books from the “Black” library, etc.
In December 1943, Rosa Parks joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She worked closely with chapter president Edgar Daniel Nixon, a man who believed that women belonged only in the kitchen. She played the role of secretary which was one of few jobs women were thought qualified for at the time. Given her passion for civil rights, it should not be a surprise that she was not willing to accept the status quo of segregation or the place she’d been given by society. In 1943, Rosa was planning to travel by bus. She paid her fare at the front of the bus and refused to disembark and re-enter through the back door, which was the rule black people were supposed to follow at that time. The angry driver pulled her coat sleeve and demanded her cooperation. She left the bus rather than give in.
The bus ride that would make her famous, and kick off the civil rights movement, came 12 years later. Rosa was riding home from work when a driver asked her to give up her seat for a white passenger. When Rosa refused, the driver called the police to come arrest her. Rosa later wrote in her autobiography, “People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
Parks partnered up with Nixon, president of the Women’s Political Council, Jo Ann Robinson, and others to stage the Montgomery bus boycott which began on the day of her trial, December 5th. The boycott lasted for over a year, and the city lost a lot of money from buses sitting empty. Born from the need to manage the extended boycott, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was elected to lead the organization.
On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional; the boycott ended December 20, a day after the Court’s written order arrived in Montgomery. Due to hostility in Alabama, Rosa and her family settled in Detroit. Rosa remained active in politics, serving as aide to Congressman John Conyers Jr. for over 20 years. She later co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development with her friend Elaine Eason Steele, to serve Detroit’s youth.
Rosa Parks is best known for her stance on segregation, but she was also an anti-rape activist and part of the League of Women Voters. Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor the United States bestows on a civilian. She died at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005 and became the first woman ever to lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol (one of only two to this day).