Parks, Rosa Louise(McCauley),(1913- )-civil rights leader,was born in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4, 1913.She was born as Rosa Louise McCauley to Mr. James and Leona McCauley. The McCauley's had one other child named Sylvester McCauley, Rosa Parks bother. James McCauley, was a carpenter by trade. Leona McCauley her mother, was a school teacher. Her father left the family with little money and with bills piling up on them, they were forced to live with her grandparents. Years later her mother, and grandparnets grew ill and she was left all the daily business of the house(cooking,shopping,and cleaning). At the tender age of eleven she was enrolled in a School for Girls in Montgomery , Alabama. The school was a private institution ran by a woman from the North, the school focused on philosophy and taught general education along with self-worth.
Rosa was Twenty when she married Raymond Parks a barber, in 1932. He was active in several civil rights causes, and they both attended Alabama State College in 1943 . Rosa worked as a seamstress, housekeeper, and as the secretary of the Montgomery branch of theNAACP(National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Youth Council, and Montgomery Voters League. She aided African-American citizens pass tests that were designed to difficult for them to pass.
December 1, 1955 marked a turning point in Rosa Parks and in many lives of Americans in Montgomery, Alabama. She was physically tired and exhausted from working all day and was fed up with the treatment she and other African Americans received every day of their lives, with the racism, segregation, and Jim Crow laws of the time. Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it writes Parks in her recent book, Quiet Strength, (ZondervanPublishingHouse, 1994).I kept thinking about my mother and my grandparents, and how strong they were. I knew there was a possibility of being mistreated, but an opportunity was being given to me to do what I had asked of others. Rosa Parks was arrested and fined $15.00 for violating United States of America segregation laws when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. This resulted in a boycott of the bus system by blacks which lasted 381-days. With Martin Luther King, Jr. leading the movement. In spite of harassment the boycott continued, and in 1956 segregated seating was challenged in a federal lawsuit. Within a few months bus segregation was ruled unconstitutional, and the buses were officially desegregated in December 1956. Though Rosa lost her job she still kept her dignity and moved to Detroit, Michiganand in 1965 she was hired by Congressman John Conyers, Jr., also a civil rights leader, to manage his Detroit office.
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