Women's History Month: Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. She attended Alabama State Teachers College (now Alabama State University) and made her living as a seamstress. In 1943 she became a member of the Montgomery (Alabama) chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and served as its secretary until 1956. On December 1, 1955, she was arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat on a public bus to a white man, a violation of the city's racial segregation ordinances. Under the aegis of the Montgomery Improvement Association and the leadership of the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Martin Luther King, Jr., a boycott of the municipal bus company was begun on December 5. It lasted until December 20, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision declaring Montgomery's segregated seating unconstitutional. For her role in sparking the successful campaign, which brought King to national prominence, Parks became known as the "mother of the Civil Rights Movement."

In 1957 Parks and her family moved to Detroit, where she was employed on the staff of U.S. Representative John Conyers from 1965 until her retirement in 1988. She remained active in the NAACP, and the Southern Christian Leadership Council established the annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award in her honor. In 1987 she established the Parks Institute for Self-Development in Detroit to provide career training for young people. Her autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story, written with Jim Haskins, was published in 1992.

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