Rosa Parks

Parks married Raymond in 1963, a barber from Montgomery. He was a member of the NAACP. She remained married to him until his death from throat cancer in 1977. They never had any children together.

1970s was a very difficult time in Parks life; she and her husband suffered from stomach ulcers for years. Her husband, her brother and mother were diagnosed with cancer. She had to take care of all of that. And eventually all of them died by the end of 70s.

Parks died in Detroit in 2005. She was the first woman and second non-U.S. government official to be honored by getting her casket transported to Washington.

Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913 in Alabama to Leona and James McCauley. She belonged to a middle class background as her father was a carpenter and mother was a teacher. Her parents separated and she moved to Pine level with her mother.

She attended the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery but for her secondary education she went to a school set up by Alabama State Teachers College for Negros. She soon dropped out of it to take care of her family.

After getting married in 1932, Parks took up small jobs, like domestic worker, hospital aide, etc. as she did not have formal education to pull off any decent job. But on her husband’s insistence, she finished high school studies.

In 1943, Parks became increasingly involved in the Civil Rights Movement for which she joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. As she was the only female there, she was elected to become the secretary of the organization.

While she was the secretary, she was given the task to investigate the gang-rape of a black woman named Recy Taylor in 1944. She along with other activists started ‘Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor’ campaign.

In the following years, Parks had a job at Maxwell Air Force Base, as federal property did not practice racism. She also took up a job as a housekeeper for Clifford and Virginia Durr, a liberal white couple.

In 1955, Parks attended a mass meeting in Montgomery to discuss the case of a black teenager Emmett Till getting murdered for flirting with a white woman. The meeting addressed the issues of racial segregation in the society.

The highlight of Parks’ life was her decision to not give up her seat on the bus in 1955. If she did not have taken a stand to fight against disparities in society that day, the Civil Rights Movement might have got delayed.