Rosa Parks

By Stephanie A. Crockett, 7 February 2003

BET.COM, Feb, 4— Rosa Parks has been called the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement because of her refusal to give up her seat to a White man on a city bus in 1955.

HER ACT led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott which changed the course of history for African Americans.

Many think the bus boycott was a knee-jerk reaction, but it wasn’t. Black civil rights leaders, including the Women’s Political Council, had been planning a boycott, they were just waiting for the right person to be arrested for sitting in the front of the bus.

At 42, Rosa Parks was that person. The boycott lasted 381 days, but after it was over, the Supreme Court passed a law declaring segregation illegal on public buses.

Fast Facts:

• Born Rosa Louise McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala., to James and Leona McCauley
• She attended a school for African-American children that went up to the sixth grade. When she was 11, she was sent to Montgomery to finish her schooling. Five years later, she would leave school to care for her sick grandmother, and later, her mother.
• Married barber and civil rights activist Raymond Parks in 1932. He helped her finish high school, and they both worked for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Parks was also a seamstress.
• From 1965-1988, Parks worked for Congressman John Conyers.
• In 1987, she established the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, to motivate young people to achieve their highest potential.