1. Created by: Benedict S. Gombocz

2.  Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February
4, 1913, to James McCauley (a carpenter) and Leona
Edwards (a teacher).
 When her parents split, she and her younger brother
Sylvester moved with their mother to their grandmother’s
farm in Pine Level, Alabama.
 Home-schooled until age 11, Rosa moved on to Alabama
State Teachers College for Negroes to receive secondary
education.
 Was forced to quit secondary education subsequently to
care for her grandmother and then her mother.

3.  In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, a barber in
Montgomery and a member of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
 Rosa Parks had a variety of jobs from being a domestic
worker to a housekeeper to a seamstress to a hospital aide;
she completed her high school education, with her
husband’s support, in 1933.
 She joined the NAACP in 1943; was elected to be volunteer
secretary to the president of the association, Edgar Nixon.

4.  Parks had seen the segregation between whites and blacks
throughout her life – the life of dealing with segregation was
marked by such discrimination against blacks on a daily base on
every level of existence; she had witnessed it in schools and
colleges, in the workplace and even in public transport.
 The system of segregation was very unusual in public buses; the
first four rows of seats were reserved for whites and the rest were
for blacks.
 A moveable board was placed in the bus to indicate the sections
reserved for each race.
 When whites came on the bus in larger numbers, the board was
moved back and additional seats were available for whites;
blacks vacating those seats had to either move to the back or
simply get off the bus.

5.  On December 1, 1955, Parks and four other people were
sitting in the front of the black section of the bus.
 As more whites got on the bus, the driver moved the board
back and asked Parks and these four to give up their seats;
the other four complied, but Parks refused to get up, and
the driver called the police and had her arrested.
 Parks’ arrest marked a nationwide movement to boycott
the city buses, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which started
the career of none other than Martin Luther King, Jr.; this
paved the way for the end of the racist and discriminatory
attitude of the United States of America.

6.  On November 13, 1956, the United States Supreme Court passed a court
order ruling that racial segregation on buses is unconstitutional; the
order reached Montgomery on December 20, 1956, and the bus boycott
ended on the subsequent day.
 During the days of the trial and for many days afterwards, Parks and
her NAACP associates, including Martin Luther King, Jr., were often
attacked by segregationists.
 Life for Parks and her husband became very hard; both lost their jobs
moved to Hampton, Virginia, and later to Detroit.
 Parks worked as a seamstress and was appointed secretary and
receptionist in the congressional office of the African-American U.S.
Representative John Conyers in 1965; she worked there until her
retirement in 1988.
 Raymond Parks died of cancer in 1977; in 1987, Rosa Parks and Elaine
Eason Steele co-founded Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self
Development.

7.  In 1992, Mrs. Parks released her autobiography titled Rosa Parks:
My Story; in 1995, another of her memoirs titled Quiet Strength
was published.
 The former details Mrs. Parks’ life until her decision to refuse to
give up her seat on the bus; the latter focuses on the part played
by faith in Parks’ life.
 Late in her life, she received a lot of honors, most notably the
Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bill Clinton in 1996.
 Mrs. Parks died on October 24, 2005, in Detroit, after a battle
with progressive dementia; she was 92.
 Her biography is a photo of a woman who had the strength and
courage to defend what was right and just.

8.  http://www.buzzle.com/articles/rosa-parks-
biography.html