BSB #43 Rosa Parks -

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913, to Leona (née Edwards), a teacher, and James McCauley, a carpenter.

In addition to African ancestry, one of Parks’s great-grandfathers was Scots-Irish and one of her great-grandmothers a part-Native American slave.

As a child, she suffered from chronic tonsillitis and was often bedridden; the family could not afford to pay for an operation to address the condition.

When her parents separated, she moved with her mother to her grandparents’ farm outside Pine Level, where her younger brother Sylvester was born.

Elementary School & Forward

When she completed her education in Pine Level at age eleven, her mother, Leona, enrolled her in Montgomery Industrial School for Girls (Miss White’s School for Girls), a private institution.

After finishing Miss White’s School, she went on to Alabama State Teacher’s College High School.

She, however, was unable to graduate with her class, because of the illness of her grandmother Rose Edwards and later her death.

Rosa joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), a century-old independent Black denomination founded by free Blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the early nineteenth century, and remained a member throughout her life

Graduation & Marriage

She received her high school diploma in 1934, after her marriage to Raymond Parks, December 18, 1932.

Raymond, now deceased was born in Wedowee, Alabama, Randolph County, February 12, 1903, received little formal education due to racial segregation.

He was a self-educated person with the assistance of his mother, Geri Parks. His immaculate dress and his thorough knowledge of domestic affairs and current events made most think he was college educated.

He supported and encouraged Rosa’s desire to complete her formal education.

Mr. Parks was an early activist in the effort to free the “Scottsboro Boys,” a celebrated case in the 1930′s.

Together, Raymond and Rosa worked in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP’s) programs.

He was an active member and she served as secretary and later youth leader of the local branch. At the time of her arrest, she was preparing for a major youth conference.

NAACP Membership

In December 1943, Parks became active in the civil rights movement, joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, and was elected secretary at a time when this was considered a woman’s job.

She later said, “I was the only woman there, and they needed a secretary, and I was too timid to say no.”

She continued as secretary until 1957. She worked for the local NAACP leader Edgar Nixon, even though he maintained that “Women don’t need to be nowhere but in the kitchen.”

When Parks asked, “Well, what about me?”, he replied: “I need a secretary and you are a good one

In 1944, in her capacity as secretary, she investigated the gang-rape of Recy Taylor, a Black woman from Abbeville, Alabama.

Parks and other civil rights activists organized “The Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor”, launching what the Chicago Defender called “the strongest campaign for equal justice to be seen in a decade”.

Parks continued her work as an anti-rape activist five years later when she helped organize protests in support of Gertrude Perkins, a Black woman who was raped by two White Montgomery police officers in the 1940s.

Parks and her husband were members of the League of Women Voters. Sometime soon after 1944, she held a brief job at Maxwell Air Force Base, which, despite its location in Montgomery, Alabama, did not permit racial segregation because it was federal property.

She rode on its integrated trolley. Speaking to her biographer, Parks noted, “You might just say Maxwell opened my eyes up.”

Parks worked as a housekeeper and seamstress for Clifford and Virginia Durr, a White couple. Politically liberal, the Durrs became her friends.

Montgomery buses: law and prevailing customs

In 1900, Montgomery had passed a city ordinance to segregate bus passengers by race. Conductors were empowered to assign seats to achieve that goal.

According to the law, no passenger would be required to move or give up their seat and stand if the bus was crowded and no other seats were available.

Over time and by custom, however, Montgomery bus drivers adopted the practice of requiring Black riders to move when there were no White-only seats left.

The first four rows of seats on each Montgomery bus were reserved for Whites. Buses had “colored” sections for Black people generally in the rear of the bus, although Blacks composed more than 75% of the ridership.

The sections were not fixed but were determined by placement of a movable sign. Black people could sit in the middle rows until the White section filled.

If more Whites needed seats, Blacks were to move to seats in the rear, stand, or, if there was no room, leave the bus.

Black people could not sit across the aisle in the same row as White people. The driver could move the “colored” section sign, or remove it altogether.

If White people were already sitting in the front, Black people had to board at the front to pay the fare, then disembark and reenter through the rear door.

For years, the Black community had complained that the situation was unfair. Parks said, “My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest. I did a lot of walking in Montgomery.”

One day in 1943, Parks boarded a bus and paid the fare. She then moved to a seat, but driver James F. Blake told her to follow city rules and enter the bus again from the back door.

When Parks exited the vehicle, Blake drove off without her.Parks waited for the next bus, determined never to ride with Blake again.

In 1957, Raymond and Rosa Parks left Montgomery for Hampton, Virginia; mostly because she was unable to find work.

She also disagreed with King and other leaders of Montgomery’s struggling civil rights movement about how to proceed, and was constantly receiving death threats.

In Hampton, she found a job as a hostess in an inn at Hampton Institute, a historically Black college.

Death

Parks died of natural causes on October 24, 2005, at the age of 92, in her apartment on the east side of Detroit. She and her husband never had children and she outlived her only sibling.

She was survived by her sister-in-law (Raymond’s sister), 13 nieces and nephews and their families, and several cousins, most of them residents of Michigan or Alabama.

City officials in Montgomery and Detroit announced on October 27, 2005, that the front seats of their city buses would be reserved with black ribbons in honor of Parks until her funeral.

Parks’ coffin was flown to Montgomery and taken in a horse-drawn hearse to the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, where she lay in repose at the altar on October 29, 2005, dressed in the uniform of a church deaconess.

A memorial service was held there the following morning. One of the speakers, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said that if it had not been for Parks, she would probably have never become the Secretary of State.

In the evening the casket was transported to Washington, D.C., and transported by a bus similar to the one in which she made her protest, to lie in honor in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.

Parks was the 31st person, the first American who had not been a U.S. government official, and the second private person (after the French planner Pierre L’Enfant) to be honored in this way.

She was the first woman and the second Black person to lie in honor in the Capitol.An estimated 50,000 people viewed the casket there, and the event was broadcast on television on October 31, 2005.

A memorial service was held that afternoon at Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, D.C.

Work Cited:

http://www.rosaparks.org/biography/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks