Rosa Parks was an activist in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. She was known with different names ‘the first lady of civil rights’ and ‘the mother of the freedom movement’. She received many awards and honors like the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal.
Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her complete name was Rosa Louise McCauley. She grew up in the southern United States. She attended the Alabama State Teacher‘s College in order to try and get her high school diploma. She left her education when her mother became ill.
Quick Facts: –
- The beginning of civil rights movements in the United States is dated to December 1, 1955, by most historians.
- On this day, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger when the white section was filled.
- She was sitting in the front row of the middle section of the bus that was open to African Americans if seats were vacant.
- Rosa Parks was on the executive board of directors of a group that organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
- Parks was arrested along with 114 other people.
- She was also forced to move from Montgomery after the boycott.
- Before this arrest, she was a civil rights activist and a long-time member of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
- Rosa Parks was not the first African-American who refused to give up her seat during the Jim Crow Era.
- A high school student Claudette Colvin was arrested about nine months before Rosa took the step.
