Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American civil rights activist. She is best known for her 1955 refusal to move from her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in defiance of Jim Crow racial segregation laws, which sparked the Montgomery bus boycott. She is sometimes known as the "mother of the civil rights movement".

Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, Parks grew up under Jim Crow segregation. She later moved to Montgomery and joined the city's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943, serving as the organization's secretary. Despite policies designed to make it harder for Black citizens to vote, Parks successfully registered to vote after three separate attempts between 1943 and 1945. As NAACP secretary, she investigated and organized campaigns around cases of racial and other violence, including those of Recy Taylor and Jeremiah Reeves, laying the groundwork for future civil rights campaigns.

Custom in Montgomery required Black passengers to give up their seats in the front of the bus for white riders. The back rows were designated for Black riders. Before Parks refused to move, several Black Montgomerians had refused too, including 15-year-old high school student Claudette Colvin, which led to arrests. When Parks was arrested in 1955, local leaders were looking for a person who would make a good legal test case against segregation. She was considered a suitable candidate, and the Women's Political Council (WPC) organized a one-day bus boycott on the day of her trial. Many Black Montgomerians refused to ride the buses that day. After Parks was found guilty of breaking state law, the boycott was extended indefinitely, with the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) organizing its own community transportation network to keep it going. The boycott lasted 381 days, ending after segregation on buses was ruled unconstitutional in the court case Browder v. Gayle.

After the boycott, Parks faced financial hardship and health problems, partly due to her participation. In 1957 she moved to Detroit, Michigan, and continued to fight for civil rights, supporting people such as John Conyers, Joanne Little, Gary Tyler, Angela Davis, Joe Madison, and Nelson Mandela. She also supported the Black power movement and was an anti-apartheid activist, taking part in protests and conferences as part of the Free South Africa Movement. In 1987 she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development with Elaine Eason Steele.

After Parks died in 2005, she was honored with public viewings and memorial services in three cities: Montgomery; Washington, D.C., where she lay in state at the United States Capitol rotunda; and Detroit, where she was finally buried at Woodlawn Cemetery. Parks received many awards and honors during her life and after her death. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Congressional Gold Medal, and she was the first Black American to be memorialized in the National Statuary Hall. For other uses of the name, see Rosa Parks (disambiguation).

Early life

Rosa Louise McCauley was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her mother, Leona (née Edwards), was a teacher from Pine Level, Alabama. Her father, James McCauley, was a carpenter and mason from Abbeville, Alabama. Her name was a portmanteau of her grandmothers' names, Rose and Louisa. Her family had African, Scotch-Irish, and Native American roots, and her maternal grandfather was the child of an enslaved woman and a plantation owner's son. In Pine Level, Parks attended the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, a Black denomination founded by free Blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and she remained a member her whole life. As a child, she worked on a plantation and attended school in a growing Alabama shaped by segregationist laws. After the Civil War, southern states began passing these rules, and a state constitutional convention in 1901 formally wrote Jim Crow segregation into law. Racist violence was also common, with the Ku Klux Klan increasing its activity after the end of World War I. Parks went to the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls and later a segregated public school. She then attended a laboratory school run by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes, but she left to care for her ailing grandmother and mother. In 1931, she met her future husband, Raymond Parks, and they married in 1932.

After their marriage, Rosa and Raymond became involved in the Scottsboro Boys case, in which nine Black youths were falsely accused of a crime in Paint Rock, Alabama. They were tried in Scottsboro, Alabama and sentenced to death by electrocution. According to historian Robin Kelley, the couple attended meetings of the Communist Party USA, which helped draw attention to the case. Parks later worked at Maxwell Air Force Base, which was fully integrated, and she found that the base showed her a different way of life from the segregation she faced at home. In 1943, she became secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) after seeing Johnnie Carr at a meeting. Black voters faced obstacles such as poll taxes and literacy tests, and with encouragement from E. D. Nixon, Parks registered to vote in 1945. As secretary, she helped investigate a serious crime against Recy Taylor, and the campaign for justice in that case drew nationwide attention. Governor Chauncey Sparks promised to investigate, though no one was indicted. Historian Danielle L. McGuire later said this effort helped lay the groundwork for the Montgomery bus boycott. Parks also worked for Clifford and Virginia Durr, a white couple who were liberal and opposed to segregation. They helped her attend the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee in 1955, where she was mentored by Septima Clark. Parks later remembered it as a place where people of all races lived and worked as equals. That August, she attended a Montgomery meeting about the murder of Emmett Till, and biographer Jeanne Theoharis notes that Parks was encouraged by the attention the case received.

Arrest and bus boycott

Before 1955, Montgomery's buses were segregated, so Black and white riders were kept apart. Most bus riders in the city were Black, yet the front rows were reserved for white passengers and the back rows for Black passengers. Drivers often told Black passengers to give up their seats for white riders. In 1943, bus driver James F. Blake confronted Rosa Parks, and she later avoided riding his bus.

On December 1, 1955, Parks sat in the middle section of a bus driven by Blake. When more white passengers boarded and Blake told Black passengers to give up their seats, Parks refused. She was arrested. Parks said that she was not tired physically but was "tired of giving in." Her arrest led community leaders, including E. D. Nixon and Fred Gray, to plan a one-day boycotts of Montgomery buses for the day of her trial. Parks was found guilty, but the boycott continued. The boycott grew under the Montgomery Improvement Association, which chose Martin Luther King Jr as its leader. In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Montgomery's buses integrated on December 20, 1956, and King called off the boycott that day.

Main article: Montgomery bus boycott

Later years

After Rosa and Raymond Parks were fired from their jobs, they faced serious money problems, especially after their landlord raised the rent by $10 a month. Parks also suffered from poor health. In 1957, she left Montgomery for Detroit to be near her family, and she worked for a time at a Holly Tree Inn in Hampton, Virginia. In the 1960s, she worked for John Conyers in his congressional office and helped his 1964 congressional campaign. She attended the March on Washington in 1963 and the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. In the 1970s, she supported the Black power movement and helped set up the Detroit chapter of the Joanne Little Defense Committee. In the 1980s, she took part in the Free South Africa Movement, which opposed apartheid, and supported Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns. In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development with Elaine Eason Steele.

In the 1990s, Parks gave a speech calling for the release of Nelson Mandela and took part in the Million Man March in 1995. On August 30, 1994, she was robbed and attacked in her home at age 81. Afterward, she moved to a gated community, and Little Caesars owner Mike Ilitch offered to pay for her housing. In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, Parks joined Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte, and Gloria Steinem in signing an open letter that cautioned against a "military response." In 2002, she received an eviction notice for unpaid rent. When the situation was publicized in 2004, her landlord forgave the back rent and allowed her to live in the building for the rest of her life.

Death and funeral

Parks died of natural causes in her home on October 24, 2005, at the age of 92. City officials in Detroit and Montgomery reserved the front seats of their city buses with black ribbons and fabric in her honor until her funeral. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick placed a ribbon on October 27. Her remains were flown to Montgomery for a public viewing and funeral service, which was attended by United States secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. Rice said that "without Mrs. Parks, I probably would not be standing here today as Secretary of State." Her remains were then flown to Washington, D.C., and the plane circled twice over Montgomery while the pilot sang "We Shall Overcome."

Representative Conyers introduced Concurrent Resolution 61, which was approved on October 29, 2005. It allowed Parks's remains to lie in state at the United States Capitol rotunda from October 30 to 31. The United States National Guard carried her remains to the rotunda. About 40,000 mourners came to pay their respects. President George W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush laid a wreath on her coffin. Parks was the 31st person, and the second private citizen, to lie in state. A public memorial was held at the Metropolitan AME Church before her remains returned to Detroit. In Detroit, her casket was displayed at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. At a memorial service at the Greater Grace Temple on November 2, attendees included former president and first lady Bill and Hillary Clinton, and US senator Barack Obama. Soul singer Aretha Franklin performed. Parks was then buried in a mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery, alongside Raymond and her mother. The chapel there was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel in her honor.

Legacy and honors

Rosa Parks received many awards for her work in the civil rights movement. In 1996, President Bill Clinton presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award a civilian can receive from the United States executive branch. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal after unanimous Senate approval, despite opposition in the House from Representative Ron Paul. Other honors included the Spingarn Medal in 1979, induction into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1983, the Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1984, and induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993. In 1999, Time named her one of the 20 most influential figures of the 20th century. Many places were also named in her honor. Detroit's 12th Street became "Rosa Parks Boulevard" in 1976, and Michigan made February 4 Rosa Parks Day in 1997. Troy University opened the Rosa Parks Library and Museum at the site of her arrest in 2000. The bus on which she refused to move was placed on display at The Henry Ford museum in 2003. The Rosa Parks Transit Center opened in Detroit in 2009, and the Rosa Parks Railway Station in Paris opened in 2015. After her death in 2005, a statue of Parks was authorized for National Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol. She was the first Black American to receive this honor. The statue, sculpted by Eugene Daub and Rob Firmin, was unveiled in 2013 with John Boehner in attendance.

Many popular stories about Parks portray her as a heroine. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said her refusal to move was "not an intentional attempt to change a nation, but a singular act aimed at restoring the dignity of the individual". Writing in the Florida State University Law Review, civil rights advocate A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. called her a "heroine". Biographer Jeanne Theoharis argues in her 2015 book that the popular picture of Parks as a "quiet" and "accidental" figure hides her lifelong activism. Sociologist Barry Schwartz notes that other people, such as Browder, Colvin, Smith, and McDonald, played equally important and even more active roles in the struggle against segregation. Scholars have also compared her act with earlier civil disobedience, showing that the story of one brave moment can simplify the wider movement and leave other people's contributions forgotten.

In popular culture

In 1999, Parks filmed a cameo appearance for Touched by an Angel. She was played by Iris Little-Thomas in the 2001 film Boycott, directed by Clark Johnson, and by Angela Bassett in the 2002 movie The Rosa Parks Story, directed by Julie Dash. A short documentary film, Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks, was nominated for Best Documentary Short Film at the 75th Academy Awards. The 2002 film Barbershop, directed by Tim Story, caused controversy because of a scene about Parks. In it, Eddie, played by Cedric the Entertainer, says her actions were those of a tired person and that others had done similar things without recognition. Al Sharpton criticized the movie and called for a boycott, and NAACP president Kweisi Mfume said the controversy was "overblown." Parks boycotted the 2003 NAACP Image Awards ceremony, which Cedric hosted. The 2018 episode "Rosa" of Doctor Who centers on Parks, played by Vinette Robinson. According to the BBC, many online commenters felt the writers had not undermined Parks's legacy. In 2022, the first full-length documentary about Parks, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, was released on Peacock. It was directed by Johanna Hamilton and Yoruba Richen.

In 1999, Parks filed a lawsuit against the hip-hop duo Outkast and their record company. She claimed that their song "Rosa Parks," from the 1998 album Aquemini, used her name without permission. After a federal court dismissed that case, she filed another suit in 2004 against BMG Rights Management, Arista Records, and LaFace Records. In 2005, a settlement was reached, and Outkast and BMG agreed to work on projects to teach young people about Parks's role, without admitting wrongdoing. Rapper Nicki Minaj received online criticism for mentioning Parks in her 2020 song "Yikes." Journalist Ernest Owens said the lyric wrongly described Parks's actions, since she stayed seated. In 1979, a card in the Supersisters trading card set featured Parks. In 2019, Mattel released a Barbie doll in her likeness as part of its "Inspiring Women" series. On January 4, 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reviewed a lawsuit brought by the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute against Target, which sold merchandise using Parks's name. Judge Robin S. Rosenbaum wrote that using her name and likeness in the books, movie, and plaque was necessary to discuss the history of the Civil Rights Movement, which is protected by Michigan's qualified privilege. This allowed Target to sell the items.