Who is Rosa Parks ? Rosa Parks is a former American activist who was known for his pivotal role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, she was honored by the American Congress as a first lady of civil rights and the mother of freedom movement.
Who is Rosa Parks ?
Rosa Parks, an American civil rights activist, was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913, and passed away in Detroit, Michigan, on October 24, 2005. Her refusal to give up her seat on a public bus in 1955–1956 led to the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama, which served as the impetus for the American civil rights movement.
About Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, to James McCauley, a skillful stonemason and carpenter, and Leona Edwards McCauley, a teacher. Rosa Louise McCauley suffered from chronic tonsillitis for a large portion of her early years. Her parents decided to divorce when she was two years old, not long after the birth of her younger brother, Sylvester. The kids moved with their mother to live on their maternal grandparents’ farm, being estranged from their father from that point on.
Rosa was taught at home for a large portion of her early years by her mother, who was also a teacher at a nearby school. Rosa picked up cooking and sewing skills while helping out with farm chores. But living on the farm was anything but perfect. She subsequently recounted that the Ku Klux Klan was a continual menace, “burning Negro churches, schools, flogging and killing” Black families. With a arm in hand, Rosa’s grandfather would frequently stand guard at night, anticipating a group of aggressive white males. Rosa’s widowed aunt and her five children were often seen inside the house with the family, with the windows and doors boarded shut.
Racism also affected Rosa and her family in less overt ways. Rosa had to attend a segregated school when she started school in Pine Level, where a single teacher was responsible for 50–60 students. Black students in the region had to walk to school while White children in the vicinity were bused. Jim Crow laws segregated restaurants, drinking fountains, schools, and public transit. Rosa enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial academic for Girls at the age of eleven, where Black girls received instruction in both household skills and conventional academic subjects. After that, she attended a Black junior high school for her ninth grade year and a Black teacher’s college for her tenth and partially eleventh grades. But she was forced to drop out of school when she was sixteen.
Rosa Parks achievement
Parks relocated to Detroit in 1957 with her spouse and mother, where she served as a member of Congressman John Conyers, Jr.’s staff in Michigan from 1965 to 1988. She continued to be involved with the NAACP, and in her honor, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference instituted the Rosa Parks Freedom Award each year. She was a co-founder of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development in 1987, which aimed to teach youth about the history of the civil rights movement and to train young people for careers. Among the many honors she was present with were the Congressional Gold Medal (1999) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1996). Rosa Parks: My Story, her autobiography, was co-written by Jim Haskins and published in 1992.
Even though it was an amazing accomplishment to desegregate Montgomery’s city buses, Parks was not happy with the outcome. She observed that Black Americans’ lives were still not respected or adequately protected by the US. Less than ten years after Parks’s appeal was successful, Martin Luther King Jr., who had gained national recognition for organizing the Montgomery bus boycott, was slain. In one of her final interviews, Parks would not exactly admit that she was happy, according to biographer Kathleen Tracy: “I do the great I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day, but I don’t think there is such a thing as complete happiness.” It hurts me that
Parks’ body was placed on display in the U.S. Capitol’s rotunda following her death in 2005. This honor is given to private individuals who have rendered distinguished services to their nation. Grievers viewed her coffin for two days, expressing gratitude for her commitment to civil rights. Parks was the only other Black person to earn the honor and the first woman to do so.
