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Civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott that eventually ended racial segregation on public transportation.

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Who Was Rosa Parks?

Quick facts, childhood, family, and education, montgomery bus boycott, life after the bus boycott, outkast song controversy, awards, tributes, and movie.

Born in February 1913, Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in 1955 led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Her bravery led to nationwide efforts to end racial segregation on public transportation and elsewhere. Parks was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Award by the NAACP, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal. She has been described as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.” She died in October 2005 at age 92.

FULL NAME: Rosa Louise McCauley Parks BORN: February 4, 1913 DIED: October 24, 2005 BIRTHPLACE: Tuskegee, Alabama SPOUSE: Raymond Parks (1932-1977) ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her parents, James and Leona McCauley, separated when Parks was 2. Parks’ mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama, to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards. Both of Rosa’s grandparents were formerly enslaved people and strong advocates for racial equality.

The family lived on the Edwards’ farm, and this is where Rosa spent her youth. She experienced chronic tonsillitis as a child that often left her bedridden. After undergoing a tonsillectomy in the fifth grade, she experienced temporary blindness, but her health improved soon afterward, according to Rosa Parks: A Life in American History by Darryl Mace.

Early in life, Rosa experienced racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. Once, her grandfather Sylvester stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street.

Young Rosa often fought back physically against bullying from white children, noting: “As far back as I remember, I could never think in terms of accepting physical abuse without some form of retaliation if possible,” according to The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis.

Taught to read by her mother at a young age, Rosa attended segregated schools throughout her education. The one-room school in Pine Level where she went often lacked adequate school supplies such as desks. Black students were forced to walk to the first through sixth-grade schoolhouse, while the city provided bus transportation as well as a new school building for white students.

At age 11, Rosa began at the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery, Alabama. She moved onto a laboratory school for secondary education led by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes. In 1929, Rosa left the school in the 11 th grade to help both her sick grandmother and mother back in Pine Level.

For a time, she worked at a shirt factory in Montgomery, but Rosa did eventually earn her high school degree in 1933. This was a significant accomplishment for a young Black woman in the mid-1930s, during a time when eight out every 10 Black children of high school age in southern states weren’t even enrolled in secondary schools, according to Rosa Parks: A Biography by Joyce A. Hanson.

In 1932, at age 19, Rosa met and married Raymond Parks, a barber and an active member of the NAACP as well as the League of Women Voters. The couple never had children, and their marriage lasted until his death in 1977.

Raymond was involved with the Montgomery labor rights movement and led a national pledge drive to support the legal defense of the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black teenagers falsely accused in Alabama of raping two white women in 1931. As Rosa’s own interest in civil activism rose, Raymond discouraged her from actively participating in the Scottsboro Boys defense efforts due to the dangers involved. Rosa said her husband believed, “It was hard enough if he had to run... He couldn’t leave me, and I couldn’t run as fast,” according to The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks . She didn’t let that stop her.

After graduating high school with Raymond’s support, Rosa became actively involved in civil rights issues by joining the NAACP’s Montgomery chapter in 1943, serving as its youth leader as well as secretary to NAACP President E.D. Nixon . She held the post until 1957.

During her time at the NAACP, she was involved in investigating the gang rape of Recy Taylor , a Black woman in Henry County, Alabama. Parks also attended meetings to discuss the murder of Emmett Till , a Black teenage who was tortured and lynched after being accused of offending a white woman in Mississippi in 1955.

After a long day’s work at a Montgomery department store, where she worked as a seamstress, Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus for home on December 1, 1955. She took a seat in the first of several rows designated for “colored” passengers.

The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be segregated and that bus drivers had the “powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions” of the code. That meant drivers were required to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and Black passengers by assigning seats. A line roughly in the middle of a bus separated white passengers in the front from Black passengers in the back. When an African American passenger boarded the bus, they had to get on at the front to pay their fare, then get off and reboard the bus at the back door.

As the bus Parks was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full, and driver James F. Blake noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. Blake stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row, asking four Black passengers to give up their seats. The city’s bus ordinance didn’t specifically give drivers the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone, regardless of color. However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of moving back the sign separating Black and white passengers and, if necessary, asking Black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers. If the Black passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed.

Three of the other Black passengers on the bus complied with the driver, but Parks refused and remained seated. Blake demanded, “Why don’t you stand up?” to which Parks replied, “I don’t think I should have to stand up.” He called the police and had her arrested. Parks later said of the incident : “When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night.”

The police arrested Parks at the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code. She was taken to police headquarters, where, later that night, she was released on bail.

Parks’ protest made her the public face of what later became known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott . The evening that Parks was arrested, E.D. Nixon began forming plans to organize a boycott of Montgomery’s city buses. Members of the Black community were asked to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5, 1955—the day of Parks’ trial—in protest of her arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab, or walk to work. Ads were placed in local papers, and handbills were printed and distributed in Black neighborhoods.

In fact, Parks wasn’t the first to push back against segregated busing practices. A 15-year-old nurse aid and activist named Claudette Colvin had similarly refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger nine months before Parks had done so, but the NAACP felt Parks was the better candidate to highlight for the public, and so Colvin’s actions remained relatively little-known. Colvin later said she wasn’t publicized because she was a pregnant teen and because Parks was more fair-skinned and had the look that “that people associate with the middle class.”

On the morning of December 5, a group of leaders from the Black community gathered at the Mt. Zion Church in Montgomery to discuss strategies and determined that their boycott effort required a new organization and strong leadership. They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), electing Montgomery newcomer Martin Luther King Jr. as minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The MIA believed that Parks’ case provided an excellent opportunity to take further action to create real change.

When Parks arrived at the courthouse for trial that morning with her attorney, Fred Gray, she was greeted by a bustling crowd of around 500 local supporters, who rooted her on. Following a 30-minute hearing, Parks was found guilty of violating a local ordinance and was fined $10, as well as a $4 court fee.

Inarguably the biggest event of the day, however, was what Parks’ trial had triggered. The city’s buses were, by and large, empty. Some people carpooled and others rode in Black-operated cabs, but most of the estimated 40,000 African American commuters living in the city at the time had opted to walk to work that day—some as far as 20 miles.

Due to the size and scope of, and loyalty to, the boycott, the effort continued for several months. The city of Montgomery had become a victorious eyesore, with dozens of public buses sitting idle, ultimately severely crippling finances for its transit company. With the boycott’s progress, however, came strong resistance.

Some segregationists retaliated with violence. Black churches were burned, and both King and Nixon’s homes were destroyed by bombings. Still, further attempts were made to end the boycott. The insurance was canceled for the city taxi system that African Americans used. Black citizens were also arrested for violating an antiquated law prohibiting boycotts.

In response, members of the Black community took legal action. Armed with the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which stated that separate but equal policies had no place in public education , a Black legal team took the issue of segregation on public transit systems to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Northern Division. Parks’ attorney, Fred Gray, filed the suit.

In June 1956, the district court declared racial segregation laws, also known as “Jim Crow laws,” unconstitutional. The city of Montgomery appealed the court’s decision shortly thereafter, but on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling, declaring segregation on public transport to be unconstitutional.

With the transit company and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift its enforcement of segregation on public buses, and the boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956, after 381 days. The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the Black community, made the Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.

Although she had become a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement , Parks suffered hardship in the months following her arrest in Montgomery and the subsequent boycott. She lost her department store job, and her husband was fired from his barber job at Maxwell Air Force Base after his boss forbade him to talk about his wife or their legal case. The couple began receiving constant death threats, and Raymond started sleeping with his gun for protection as a result, according to The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks .

Unable to find work, they eventually left Montgomery and moved to Detroit with Parks’ mother. There, Parks made a new life for herself, working as a secretary and receptionist in U.S. Representative John Conyer’s congressional office. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Parks remained involved in activism throughout her life, speaking out against housing discrimination and police abuse. She also befriended Malcolm X , considering him her “personal hero.”

In 1987, a decade after her husband’s death, Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development with longtime friend Elaine Eason Steele. The organization runs “Pathways to Freedom” bus tours, introducing young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country.

In 1992, Parks published Rosa Parks: My Story , an autobiography recounting her life in the segregated South. In 1995, she published Quiet Strength , which focuses on the role that religious faith played throughout her life.

In 1998, the hip-hop group Outkast released a song, “Rosa Parks,” which peaked at No. 55 on the Billboard Hot 100 music chart the following year. The song featured the chorus: “Ah-ha, hush that fuss. Everybody move to the back of the bus.”

In 1999, Parks filed a lawsuit against the group and its label alleging defamation and false advertising because Outkast used Parks’ name without her permission. Outkast said the song was protected by the First Amendment and didn’t violate Parks’ publicity rights. In 2003, a judge dismissed the defamation claims. Parks’ lawyer soon refiled based on the false advertising claims for using her name without permission, seeking over $5 billion.

On April 14, 2005, the case was settled. Outkast and co-defendants SONY BMG Music Entertainment, Arista Records LLC, and LaFace Records admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute to develop educational programs that “enlighten today’s youth about the significant role Rosa Parks played in making America a better place for all races,” according to a statement released at the time.

On October 24, 2005, Parks quietly died in her apartment in Detroit at the age of 92. She had been diagnosed the previous year with progressive dementia, which she had been suffering from since at least 2002.

Parks’ death was marked by several memorial services, among them, lying in honor at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, where an estimated 50,000 people viewed her casket.

Parks was the first woman and only the second Black person—after Jacob Joseph Chestnut, a U.S. Capitol police officer killed in 1998—to lie in the Capitol , which is considered the “most suitable place for the nation to pay final tribute to its most eminent citizens.” City officials in Montgomery and Detroit reserved the front seats of their buses with black ribbons in honor of Parks.

Parks was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery, in the chapel’s mausoleum. Shortly after her death, the chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel. Speaking during her funeral, then–Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, “I can honestly say that without Mrs. Parks, I probably would not be standing here today as secretary of state.”

Parks received many accolades during her lifetime, including the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP’s highest award, and the prestigious Martin Luther King Jr. Award. On September 15, 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the United States’ executive branch. The following year, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch. Time magazine named Parks on its 1999 list of “The 20 Most Influential People of the 20 th Century.”

In 2000, Troy University created the Rosa Parks Museum , located at the site of her arrest in downtown Montgomery, Alabama. In 2001, the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, consecrated Rosa Parks Circle, a 3.5-acre park designed by architect Maya Lin , who is best known for designing the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington.

A biographical movie starring Angela Bassett and directed by Julie Dash, The Rosa Parks Story , was released in 2002. The movie won the 2003 NAACP Image Award, Christopher Award, and Black Reel Award.

On February 4, 2013—which would have been Parks’ 100th birthday—a commemorative U.S. Postal Service stamp was released called the Rosa Parks Forever stamp, featuring a rendition of the famed activist.

Also in February 2013, President Barack Obama unveiled a statue, designed by Robert Firmin and sculpted by Eugene Daub, honoring Parks in the nation’s Capitol building. He remembered Parks by saying: “In a single moment, with the simplest of gestures, she helped change America and change the world,” Obama said during the dedication ceremony . “And today, she takes her rightful place among those who shaped this nation’s course.”

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• At the time I was arrested, I had no idea it would turn into this. It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in.
• I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.
• People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired... the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
• Each person must live their life as a model for others.
• I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free.
• I’d see the bus pass every day... the bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black and white world.
• When I thought about Emmett Till, I could not go to the back of the bus.
• My only concern was to get home after a hard day’s work.
• The time had just come when I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed.
• I had decided that I would have to know once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen, even in Montgomery, Alabama.
• My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest. I did a lot of walking in Montgomery.
• My desires were to be free as soon as I learned that there had been slavery of human beings.
• As I look back on those days, it’ s just like a dream, and the only thing that bothered me was that we waited so long to make this protest and to let it be known, wherever we go, that all of us should be free and equal and have all opportunities that others should have.
• God has always given me the strength to say what is right.
• There were times when it would have been easy to fall apart or to go in the opposite direction, but somehow, I felt that if I took one more step, someone would come along to join me.
• When I made that decision [to refuse to surrender my seat] , I knew I had the strength of my ancestors behind me.
• I am always very respectful and very much in awe of the presence of Septima Clark , because her life story makes the effort that I have made very minute. I only hope that there is a possible chance that some of her great courage and dignity and wisdom has rubbed off on me.

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On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of going to the back of the bus, which was designated for African Americans, she sat in the front. When the bus started to fill up with white passengers, the bus driver asked Parks to move. She refused. Her resistance set in motion one of the largest social movements in history, the Montgomery Bus Boycott .

Rosa Louise McCauley was born on February 4th, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. As a child, she went to an industrial school for girls and later enrolled at Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes (present-day Alabama State University). Unfortunately, Parks was forced to withdraw after her grandmother became ill. Growing up in the segregated South, Parks was frequently confronted with racial discrimination and violence. She became active in the Civil Rights Movement at a young age.

Parks married a local barber by the name of Raymond Parks when she was 19. He was actively fighting to end racial injustice. Together the couple worked with many social justice organizations. Eventually, Rosa was elected secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). 

By the time Parks boarded the bus in 1955, she was an established organizer and leader in the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. Parks not only showed active resistance by refusing to move she also helped organize and plan the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Many have tried to diminish Parks’ role in the boycott by depicting her as a seamstress who simply did not want to move because she was tired. Parks denied the claim and years later revealed her true motivation:

“People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

Parks courageous act and the subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott led to the integration of public transportation in Montgomery. Her actions were not without consequence. She was jailed for refusing to give up her seat and lost her job for participating in the boycott.

After the boycott, Parks and her husband moved to Hampton, Virginia and later permanently settled in Detroit, Michigan. Parks work proved to be invaluable in Detroit’s Civil Rights Movement. She was an active member of several organizations which worked to end inequality in the city. By 1980, after consistently giving to the movement both financially and physically Parks, now widowed, suffered from financial and health troubles. After almost being evicted from her home, local community members and churches came together to support Parks. On October 24th, 2005, at the age of 92, she died of natural causes leaving behind a rich legacy of resistance against racial discrimination and injustice.

• Parks, Rosa. Rosa Parks: My Story. New York: Puffin Books, 1999.
• Theoharis, Jeanne. The Rebellious Life of Mrs.Rosa Parks. New York: Beacon Press, 2014.
• “An Act of Courage, The Arrest Records of Rosa Parks” National Archives, Accessed 23 March 2017. https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/rosa-parks
• PHOTO: Library of Congress

MLA – Norwood, Arlisha. "Rosa Parks." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2017. Date accessed.

Chicago- Norwood, Arlisha. "Rosa Parks." National Women's History Museum. 2017. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/rosa-parks.

• Robinson, Jo Ann. Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robison. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987.
• “Rosa Parks: How I Fought for Civil Rights.” Scholastic Teacher’s Activity Guide. Accessed 23 March 2017.
• “What If: I Don’t Move to the Back of The Bus?” The Henry Ford Foundation : Stories of Innovation, Accessed March 23 2017.

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ROSA LOUISE PARKS BIOGRAPHY

Rosa Louise Parks was nationally recognized as the “mother of the modern day civil rights movement” in America. Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white male passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, December 1, 1955, triggered a wave of protest December 5, 1955 that reverberated throughout the United States. Her quiet courageous act changed America, its view of black people and redirected the course of history.

Mrs. Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley, February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. She was the first child of James and Leona Edwards McCauley. Her brother, Sylvester McCauley, now deceased, was born August 20, 1915. Later, the family moved to Pine Level, Alabama where Rosa was reared and educated in the rural school. 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.

As Rosa Parks prepared to return to Alabama State Teacher’s College, her mother also became ill, therefore, she continued to take care of their home and care for her mother while her brother, Sylvester, worked outside of the home. 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.

After the arrest of Rosa Parks, black people of Montgomery and sympathizers of other races organized and promoted a boycott of the city bus line that lasted 381 days. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was appointed the spokesperson for the Bus Boycott and taught nonviolence to all participants. Contingent with the protest in Montgomery, others took shape throughout the south and the country. They took form as sit-ins, eat-ins, swim-ins, and similar causes. Thousands of courageous people joined the “protest” to demand equal rights for all people.

Mrs. Parks moved to Detroit, Michigan in 1957. In 1964 she became a deaconess in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME).

Congressman John Conyers First Congressional District of Michigan employed Mrs. Parks, from 1965 to 1988. In February, 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development with Ms. Elaine Eason Steele in honor of her husband, Raymond (1903-1977). The purpose is to motivate and direct youth not targeted by other programs to achieve their highest potential. Rosa Parks sees the energy of young people as a real force for change. It is among her most treasured themes of human priorities as she speaks to young people of all ages at schools, colleges, and national organizations around the world.

The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development’s “Pathways to Freedom program, traces the underground railroad into the civil rights movement and beyond. Youth, ages 11 through 17, meet and talk with Mrs. Parks and other national leaders as they participate in educational and historical research throughout the world. They journey primarily by bus as “freedom riders” did in the 1960′s,the theme: “Where have we been? Where are we going?”

As a role model for youth she was stimulated by their enthusiasm to learn as much about her life as possible. A modest person, she always encourages them to research the lives of other contributors to world peace. The Institute and The Rosa Parks Legacy are her legacies to people of good will.

Mrs. Parks received more than forty-three honorary doctorate degrees, including one from SOKA UNIVERSITY, Tokyo Japan, hundreds of plaques, certificates, citations, awards and keys to many cities. Among them are the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal, the UAW’s Social Justice Award, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Non – Violent Peace Prize and the ROSA PARKS PEACE PRIZE in 1994, Stockholm Sweden, to name a few. In September 1996 President William J. Clinton, the forty second President of the United States of America gave Mrs. Parks the MEDAL OF FREEDOM, the highest award given to a civilian citizen.

Published Act no.28 of 1997 designated the first Monday following February 4, as Mrs Rosa Parks’ Day in the state of Michigan, her home state. She is the first living person to be honored with a holiday.

She was voted by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most Influential people of the 20th century. A Museum and Library is being built in her honor, in Montgomery, AL and will open in the fall of the year 2000 (ground breaking April 21, 1998). On September 2, 1998 The Rosa L. Parks Learning Center was dedicated at Botsford Commons, a senior community in Michigan. Through the use of computer technology, youth will mentor seniors on the use of computers. (Mrs. Parks was a member of the first graduating class on November 24, 1998). On September 26, 1998 Mrs. Parks was the recipient of the first International Freedom Conductor’s Award by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.

She attended her first “State of the Union Address” in January 1999. Mrs. Parks received a unanimous bipartisan standing ovation when President William Jefferson Clinton acknowledged her. Representative Julia Carson of Indianapolis, Indiana introduced H. R. Bill 573 on February 4, 1999, which would award Mrs. Rosa Parks the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor if it passed the House of Representatives and the Senate by a majority. The bill was passed unanimously in the Senate on April 19, and with one descenting vote in the House of Representatives on April 20. President Clinton signed it into law on May 3, 1999. Mrs. Parks was one of only 250 individuals at the time, including the American Red Cross to receive this honor. President George Washington was the first to receive the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor. President Nelson Mandela is also listed among the select few of world leaders who have received the medal.

In the winter of 2000 Mrs. Parks met Pope John-Paul II in St. Louis, MO and read a statement to him asking for racial healing. She received the NAACP Image Award for Best Supporting Actress in the Television series, TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL, “Black like Monica”. Troy State University at Montgomery opened The Rosa Parks Library and Museum on the site where Mrs. Parks was arrested December 1, 1955. It opened on the 45th Anniversary of her arrest and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

“The Rosa Parks Story” was filmed in Montgomery, Alabama May 2001, an aired February 24, 2002 on the CBS television network. Mrs. Parks continues to receive numerous awards including the very first Lifetime Achievement Award ever given by The Institute for Research on Women & Gender, Stanford University. She received the Gandhi, King, Ikeda award for peace and on October 29, 2003 Mrs. Parks was an International Institute Heritage Hall of fame honoree. On February 4, 2004 Mrs. Parks 91st birthday was celebrated at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. On December 21, 2004 the 49th Anniversary of the Mrs. Parks’ arrest was commemorated with a Civil Rights and Hip-Hop Forum at the Franklin Settlement in Detroit, Michigan.

On February 4, 2005 Mrs. Parks’ 92nd birthday was celebrate at Calvary Baptist Church in Detroit, MI. Students from the Detroit Public Schools did “Willing to be Arrested,” a reenactment of Mrs. Parks arrest. February 6, 2005 Mrs. Parks received the first annual Cardinal Dearden Peace Award at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Detroit, MI. February 19 – 20, composer Hannibal Lokumbe premiered an original symphony “Dear Mrs. Parks.” Mr. Lokumbe did this original work as part of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s ” Classical Roots Series.” The beginning of many events that will commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Mrs. Parks’ arrest December 1, 1955.

Mrs. Parks has written four books, Rosa Parks: My Story: by Rosa Parks with Jim Haskins, Quiet Strength by Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed, Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today’s Youth by Rosa Parks with Gregory J, Reed, this book received the NAACP’s Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, (Children’s) in 1996 and her latest book, I AM ROSA PARKS by Rosa Parks with Jim Haskins, for preschoolers.

A quiet exemplification of courage, dignity, and determination; Rosa Parks was a symbol to all to remain free. Rosa Parks made her peaceful transition October 24, 2005.

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Parks, Rosa

February 4, 1913 to October 24, 2005

On 1 December 1955 local  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  (NAACP) leader Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This single act of nonviolent resistance helped spark the  Montgomery bus boycott , a 13-month struggle to desegregate the city’s buses. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., the boycott resulted in the enforcement of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that public bus segregation is unconstitutional, and catapulted both King and Parks into the national spotlight.

Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on 4 February 1913, Rosa Louise McCauley Parks grew up in Montgomery and was educated at the laboratory school of Alabama State College. In 1932 she married Raymond Parks, a barber and member of the NAACP. At that time, Raymond Parks was active in the Scottsboro case. In 1943 Rosa Parks joined the local chapter of the NAACP and was elected secretary. Two years later, she registered to vote, after twice being denied.

By 1949 Parks was advisor to the local NAACP Youth Council. Under her guidance, youth members challenged the Jim Crow system by checking books out of whites-only libraries. The summer before Parks’ arrest, Virginia  Durr  arranged for Parks to travel to Tennessee’s  Highlander Folk School  to attend a workshop entitled “Racial Desegregation: Implementing the Supreme Court Decision.” It was there that Parks received encouragement from fellow participant Septima  Clark , who later joined Highlander’s staff in mid-1956.

When Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955, she was not the first African American to defy Montgomery’s bus segregation law. Nine months earlier, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. In October 1955, 18-year-old Mary Louise Smith had been arrested under similar circumstances, but both cases failed to stir Montgomery’s black leadership to help launch a mass protest. King wrote of Parks’ unique local stature in his memoir,  Stride Toward Freedom , where he talked of how her character and dedication made her widely respected in the African American community.

Although many news accounts depicted Parks as a tired seamstress, Parks explained the deep roots of her act of resistance in her autobiography: “I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in” (Parks, 116).

Parks inspired tens of thousands of black citizens to boycott the Montgomery city buses for over a year. During that period she served as a dispatcher to coordinate rides for protesters and was indicted, along with King and over 80 others, for participation in the boycott. Parks also made appearances in churches and other organizations, including some in the North, to raise funds and publicize the  Montgomery Improvement Association  (MIA).

Parks continued to face harassment following the boycott’s successful conclusion and decided to move to Detroit to seek better employment opportunities. Shortly before her departure, the MIA declared 5 August 1957 “Rosa Parks Day.” A celebration was held at Mt. Zion AME Zion Church, and $800 was presented to Parks. Despite the fanfare, Parks found it hard to believe that her actions launched an entire movement: “I had no idea when I refused to give up my seat on that Montgomery bus that my small action would help put an end to the segregation laws in the South” (Parks, 2).

In 1964 John Conyers, an African American lawyer, received Parks’ endorsement of his campaign to represent Detroit in the U.S. House of Representatives. After he won, he hired Parks as an office assistant. She remained with him until her retirement in 1988.

In 1987 she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, which provides learning and leadership opportunities for youth and seniors. She was an active supporter of civil rights causes in her elder years. She died in October 2005, at the age of 92. 

Introduction, in  Papers  3:3, 5 .

King,  Stride Toward Freedom , 1958.

Parks,  Rosa Parks , 1992.

Robinson,  Montgomery Bus Boycott , 1987.

Educator Resources

An Act of Courage, The Arrest Records of Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955, during a typical evening rush hour in Montgomery, Alabama, a 42-year-old woman took a seat on the bus on her way home from the Montgomery Fair department store where she worked as a seamstress. Before she reached her destination, she quietly set off a social revolution when the bus driver instructed her to move back, and she refused. Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested that day for violating a city law requiring racial segregation of public buses.

On the city buses of Montgomery, Alabama, the front 10 seats were permanently reserved for white passengers. The diagram shows that Mrs. Parks was seated in the first row behind those 10 seats. When the bus became crowded, the bus driver instructed Mrs. Parks and the other three passengers seated in that row, all African Americans, to vacate their seats for the white passengers boarding. Eventually, three of the passengers moved, while Mrs. Parks remained seated, arguing that she was not in a seat reserved for whites. James Blake, the driver, believed he had the discretion to move the line separating black and white passengers. The law was actually somewhat murky on that point, but when Mrs. Parks defied his order, he called the police. Officers Day and Mixon came and promptly arrested her.

In police custody, Mrs. Parks was booked, fingerprinted, and briefly incarcerated. The police report shows that she was charged with "refusing to obey orders of bus driver." For openly challenging the racial laws of her city, she remained at great physical risk while held by the police, and her family was terrified for her. When she called home, she spoke to her mother, whose first question was "Did they beat you?"

Mrs. Parks was not the first person to be prosecuted for violating the segregation laws on the city buses in Montgomery. She was, however, a woman of unchallenged character who was held in high esteem by all those who knew her. At the time of her arrest, Mrs. Parks was active in the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), serving as secretary to E.D. Nixon, president of the Montgomery chapter. Her arrest became a rallying point around which the African American community organized a bus boycott in protest of the discrimination they had endured for years. Martin Luther King, Jr., the 26-year-old minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, emerged as a leader during the well-coordinated, peaceful boycott that lasted 381 days and captured the world's attention. It was during the boycott that Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., first achieved national fame as the public became acquainted with his powerful oratory.

After Mrs. Parks was convicted under city law, her lawyer filed a notice of appeal. While her appeal was tied up in the state court of appeals, a panel of three judges in the U.S. District Court for the region ruled in another case that racial segregation of public buses was unconstitutional. That case, called Browder v. Gayle , was decided on June 4, 1956. The ruling was made by a three-judge panel that included Frank M. Johnson, Jr., and upheld by the United States Supreme court on November 13, 1956.

For a quiet act of defiance that resonated throughout the world, Rosa Parks is known and revered as the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement."

The documents shown here relating to Mrs. Parks's arrest are copies that were submitted as evidence in the Browder v. Gayle case. They are preserved by the National Archives at Atlanta in Morrow, Georgia, in Record Group 21, Records District Courts of the United States, U.S. District Court for Middle District of Alabama, Northern (Montgomery) Division. Civil Case 1147, Browder, et al v. Gayle, et al .

Suggested Reading

Bass, Jack. Taming the Storm?The Life and Times of Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. and the South's Fight over Civil Rights . NY: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1993.

Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 . NY: Simon & Schuster, 1988.

Parks, Rosa. Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue with Today's Youth .

Parks, Rosa and Jim Haskins (contributor). Rosa Parks: My Story .

Stevenson, Janet. "Rosa Parks Wouldn't Budge." American Heritage , Vol. XXIII, No. 2, February 1972.

Williams, Juan. Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 . New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1987.

The Documents

Article Citation

Bredhoff, Stacey, Wynell Schamel, and Lee Ann Potter. "The Arrest Records of Rosa Parks." Social Education 63, 4 (May/June 1999): 207-211.

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Montgomery Bus Boycott

By: History.com Editors

Updated: January 10, 2023 | Original: February 3, 2010

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks , an African American woman, was arrested and fined for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white man. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ordered Montgomery to integrate its bus system, and one of the leaders of the boycott, a young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr. , emerged as a prominent leader of the American civil rights movement .

Rosa Parks' Bus

In 1955, African Americans were still required by a Montgomery, Alabama , city ordinance to sit in the back half of city buses and to yield their seats to white riders if the front half of the bus, reserved for whites, was full.

But on December 1, 1955, African American seamstress Rosa Parks was commuting home on Montgomery’s Cleveland Avenue bus from her job at a local department store. She was seated in the front row of the “colored section.” When the white seats filled, the driver, J. Fred Blake, asked Parks and three others to vacate their seats. The other Black riders complied, but Parks refused.

She was arrested and fined $10, plus $4 in court fees. This was not Parks’ first encounter with Blake. In 1943, she had paid her fare at the front of a bus he was driving, then exited so she could re-enter through the back door, as required. Blake pulled away before she could re-board the bus.

Did you know? Nine months before Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested in Montgomery for the same act. The city's Black leaders prepared to protest, until it was discovered Colvin was pregnant and deemed an inappropriate symbol for their cause.

Although Parks has sometimes been depicted as a woman with no history of civil rights activism at the time of her arrest, she and her husband Raymond were, in fact, active in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ), and Parks served as its secretary.

Upon her arrest, Parks called E.D. Nixon, a prominent Black leader, who bailed her out of jail and determined she would be an upstanding and sympathetic plaintiff in a legal challenge of the segregation ordinance. African American leaders decided to attack the ordinance using other tactics as well.

The Women’s Political Council (WPC), a group of Black women working for civil rights, began circulating flyers calling for a boycott of the bus system on December 5, the day Parks would be tried in municipal court. The boycott was organized by WPC President Jo Ann Robinson.

Montgomery’s African Americans Mobilize

As news of the boycott spread, African American leaders across Montgomery (Alabama’s capital city) began lending their support. Black ministers announced the boycott in church on Sunday, December 4, and the Montgomery Advertiser , a general-interest newspaper, published a front-page article on the planned action.

Approximately 40,000 Black bus riders—the majority of the city’s bus riders—boycotted the system the next day, December 5. That afternoon, Black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). The group elected Martin Luther King Jr. , the 26-year-old-pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church , as its president, and decided to continue the boycott until the city met its demands.

Initially, the demands did not include changing the segregation laws; rather, the group demanded courtesy, the hiring of Black drivers, and a first-come, first-seated policy, with whites entering and filling seats from the front and African Americans from the rear.

Ultimately, however, a group of five Montgomery women, represented by attorney Fred D. Gray and the NAACP, sued the city in U.S. District Court, seeking to have the busing segregation laws totally invalidated.

Although African Americans represented at least 75 percent of Montgomery’s bus ridership, the city resisted complying with the protester’s demands. To ensure the boycott could be sustained, Black leaders organized carpools, and the city’s African American taxi drivers charged only 10 cents—the same price as bus fare—for African American riders.

Many Black residents chose simply to walk to work or other destinations. Black leaders organized regular mass meetings to keep African American residents mobilized around the boycott.

Integration at Last

On June 5, 1956, a Montgomery federal court ruled that any law requiring racially segregated seating on buses violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution . That amendment, adopted in 1868 following the U.S. Civil War , guarantees all citizens—regardless of race—equal rights and equal protection under state and federal laws.

The city appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court , which upheld the lower court’s decision on December 20, 1956. Montgomery’s buses were integrated on December 21, 1956, and the boycott ended. It had lasted 381 days.

Bus Boycott Meets With Violence

Integration, however, met with significant resistance and even violence. While the buses themselves were integrated, Montgomery maintained segregated bus stops. Snipers began firing into buses, and one shooter shattered both legs of a pregnant African American passenger.

In January 1957, four Black churches and the homes of prominent Black leaders were bombed; a bomb at King’s house was defused. On January 30, 1957, the Montgomery police arrested seven bombers; all were members of the Ku Klux Klan , a white supremacist group. The arrests largely brought an end to the busing-related violence.

The MLK Graphic Novel That Inspired John Lewis and Generations of Civil Rights Activists

The illustrated book was first printed in 1957 and encouraged young people, including future Congressman John Lewis, to stage nonviolent protests.

Bet You Didn’t Know: Rosa Parks

Did you know Rosa Parks wasn’t the first African American woman to refuse to give up her seat? Get the full story.

March on Washington

Find out how Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech became an impromptu addition to the March on Washington.

Boycott Puts Martin Luther King Jr. in Spotlight

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was significant on several fronts. First, it is widely regarded as the earliest mass protest on behalf of civil rights in the United States, setting the stage for additional large-scale actions outside the court system to bring about fair treatment for African Americans.

Second, in his leadership of the MIA, Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a prominent national leader of the civil rights movement while also solidifying his commitment to nonviolent resistance. King’s approach remained a hallmark of the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s.

Shortly after the boycott’s end, he helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a highly influential civil rights organization that worked to end segregation throughout the South. The SCLC was instrumental in the civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963, and the March on Washington in August of that same year, during which King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech .

The boycott also brought national and international attention to the civil rights struggles occurring in the United States, as more than 100 reporters visited Montgomery during the boycott to profile the effort and its leaders.

Rosa Parks, while shying from the spotlight throughout her life, remained an esteemed figure in the history of American civil rights activism. In 1999, the U.S. Congress awarded her its highest honor, the Congressional Gold Medal.

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