Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. She grew up in a time when laws in the South forced Black people and white people to use separate schools, restaurants, water fountains, and even sections of the bus. Rosa attended a one-room schoolhouse and later the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, where teachers encouraged self-worth. She married Raymond Parks in 1932, a barber who was active in the civil rights movement. Together, they worked with the NAACP, where Rosa served as secretary of the Montgomery chapter.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was riding the bus home from work in Montgomery, Alabama. When the bus driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white passenger, she quietly refused. She was arrested and fined. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a 381-day protest organized by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Improvement Association. About 40,000 Black residents refused to ride city buses, walking miles to work or organizing carpools instead. The boycott ended on December 20, 1956, when the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional.

After the boycott, Parks and her husband moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she continued her civil rights work. She worked for Congressman John Conyers from 1965 to 1988. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor in the United States. When she died on October 24, 2005, she became the first woman and the second non-government official to lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol. Rosa Parks is often called 'the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.' Her simple act of courage showed that one person's decision to stand up, by sitting down, can change the world.