Today is the 100th birthday of legendary “first lady of civil rights,” Rosa Parks. Best known for refusing to give up her seat on a bus, Rosa Parks helped pave the way to equality in the United States and became a household name.
Born in Alabama as Rosa Louise McCauley in 1913, Rosa Parks grew up on a farm with her mother and grandparents and attended rural schools. The concept of segregation occurred to her when Jim Crow law was established which meant that whites and blacks had different schools, bathrooms and libraries and blacks were only allowed to sit at the back of public transportation.
She got her first glance at civil rights activism when she married a barber named Raymond Parks. Raymond Parks was a member of the NAACP which is an organisation that aims to rid racial hatred and racial discrimination. After finishing high school at her husband’s encouragement, Rosa Parks joined and was elected secretary of the Montgomery, Alabama chapter of the NAACP.
Her most famous moment occurred when she was riding a bus and the conductor insisted that she give up her seat in the “coloured section” of the bus for a white man because there were no more seats available in the white section. To everyone’s surprise, Parks refused to budge and as a result was arrested.
Since Parks was just one of many black citizens who had refused to move on buses and been penalized for it, a boycott of city buses was planned. The boycott lasted 381 days and caused the bus company to lose a lot of money. As a result, the segregation law was repelled for public buses.
This confirmed Rosa Parks as a civil rights activist, but her and her husband’s career suffered for it. They left Alabama for Virginia, where they were able to find work again. Rosa continued to travel and speak on the Civil Rights Movement. She also started the Rosa L. Parks Scholarship Foundation for seniors applying to college, the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development and the Pathways to Freedom bus tours which mark important points civil rights and Underground Railroad sites around the United States.
Rosa Parks died in her apartment in 2005 at the ripe old age of 92.