Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American civil rights activist. She is best known for her 1955 refusal to move from her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in defiance of Jim Crow racial segregation laws, which sparked the Montgomery bus boycott. She is sometimes known as the "mother of the civil rights movement".
Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, Parks grew up under Jim Crow segregation. She later moved to Montgomery and joined the city's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943, serving as the organization's secretary. Despite policies designed to disenfranchise Black citizens, Parks successfully registered to vote after three separate attempts between 1943 and 1945. She investigated cases and organized campaigns around cases of racial and sexual violence in her capacity as NAACP secretary, including those of Recy Taylor and Jeremiah Reeves, laying the groundwork for future civil rights campaigns.
Custom in Montgomery required Black passengers to surrender their seats in the front of the bus to accommodate white riders. The rows in the back were designated for Black riders. Before Parks's refusal to move, several Black Montgomerians had refused to do so, including 15-year-old high school student Claudette Colvin, leading to arrests. When Parks was arrested in 1955, local leaders were searching for a person who would be a good legal test case against segregation. She was deemed a suitable candidate, and the Women's Political Council (WPC) organized a one-day bus boycott on the day of her trial. The boycott was widespread. Many Black Montgomerians refused to ride the buses that day. After Parks was found guilty of violating state law, the boycott was extended indefinitely, with the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) organizing its own community transportation network to sustain it. Parks and other boycott leaders faced harassment, ostracization, and various legal obstacles. The boycott lasted for 381 days, finally concluding after segregation on buses was deemed unconstitutional in the court case Browder v. Gayle.
After the boycott ended, Parks experienced financial hardship and health problems due, in part, to her participation. In 1957, she relocated to Detroit, Michigan. She continued to advocate for civil rights, supporting people such as John Conyers, Joanne Little, Gary Tyler, Angela Davis, Joe Madison, and Nelson Mandela. She was also a supporter of the Black power movement and an anti-apartheid activist, participating in protests and conferences as part of the Free South Africa Movement. In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development with Elaine Eason Steele. After Parks's death in 2005, she was honored with public viewings and memorial services in three cities: in Montgomery; in Washington, D.C., where she lay in state at the United States Capitol rotunda; and in Detroit, where she was ultimately interred at Woodlawn Cemetery. Parks received many awards and honors, both throughout her life and posthumously. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Congressional Gold Medal and was the first Black American to be memorialized in the National Statuary Hall.
Early life
Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her mother, Leona (), was a teacher from Pine Level, Alabama. Her father, James McCauley, was a carpenter and mason from Abbeville, Alabama. Her name was a portmanteau of her maternal and paternal grandmothers' names: Rose and Louisa. In addition to her African ancestry, one of her great-grandfathers was of Scotch-Irish descent, and one of her great-grandmothers was of partial Native American ancestry. Her maternal grandfather, Sylvester Edwards, was the child of an enslaved woman and a plantation owner's son.
When she was a baby, Parks moved from Tuskegee to live with her father's family in Abbeville. When Parks and her parents arrived, the house became too crowded, and Parks's father was seldom home because of the itinerant nature of his job. As a result, Parks's mother left Abbeville with her, and the two relocated to Pine Level to live with Parks's mother's family. In Pine Level, Parks attended the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, a century-old independent Black denomination founded by free Blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the early nineteenth century. Baptized at age two, she remained a member of the church throughout her life.
Her mother worked as a teacher in the nearby community of Spring Hill, where she lived during the week. While her mother was away, Parks lived with her grandparents on their family farm, where they grew fruit, pecan, and walnut trees and raised chickens and cows. At the age of six or seven, she began working on the plantation of Moses Hudson, who paid Black children 50 cents a day to pick cotton. Parks also learned quilting and sewing from her mother, completing her first quilt at the age of 10 and her first dress at 11.
Growing up in Alabama, Parks faced a society characterized by racial segregation and violence. Alabama and other southern states began implementing segregationist policies during the 1870s and 1880s, shortly after the end of the Civil War in 1865, culminating in a 1901 state constitutional convention that formally codified Jim Crow segregation into law. This system enforced racial separation in nearly all aspects of life, including financial institutions, healthcare, religious facilities, burial grounds, and public transportation. Acts of racist violence were also widespread, with the Ku Klux Klan intensifying its activity in Pine Level and across the United States after the end of World War I. Parks later recalled that she "heard of a lot of black people being found dead" under mysterious circumstances during her childhood.
Parks initially attended a one-room schoolhouse at the local Mount Zion AME Zion church. When she was eleven or twelve, she began attending the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, where she received vocational training. After the school closed in 1928, she transferred to Booker T. Washington Junior High School, a segregated public school. She then attended a laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes, but dropped out to care for her ailing grandmother and mother.
After leaving school, Parks worked on her family's farm and as a domestic worker in white households. Black women in Alabama who worked as domestic workers often experienced sexual violence. During the 1950s or '60s, Parks wrote an account of an incident where a white man named "Mr. Charlie" tried to sexually assault her. In her account, she claims that she verbally resisted Mr. Charlie's advances and denounced his racism. The account concludes with her trying to ignore him while reading a newspaper. Though the account may have been partially or entirely fictionalized, biographer Jeanne Theoharis notes that many of the elements of the account "correspond to Parks's life", speculating that Parks "wrote [the account] as an allegory to suggest larger themes of domination and resistance", or that, "given that more than twenty-five years had passed before she wrote [the account] down, she augmented what she said to Charlie that evening with all the points that she had wished to make as she resisted his advances".
In 1931, when she was 18, Rosa was introduced to her future husband, Raymond Parks, by a mutual friend. He was 28. She was initially "[not] very interested in him" because of "some unhappy romantic experiences" and because of his light skin. Raymond eventually persuaded Parks to ride with him in his car. At the time, automobile ownership was rare among Black men in Alabama. Parks described Raymond as the "first real activist" she had met, admiring his opposition to racial prejudice. The two married on December 18, 1932, at Rosa's mother's house. Soon after, they moved to a rooming house in the Centennial Hill neighborhood of Montgomery.
Early activism
After their marriage, Rosa and Raymond became involved in the Scottsboro Boys case, concerning a group of nine Black youths falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in Paint Rock, Alabama. The nine were tried in Scottsboro, Alabama, where they were sentenced to death by electrocution. To raise support for their defense, Rosa and Raymond hosted fundraising meetings and gatherings for Scottsboro legal defenders at their house. According to historian Robin Kelley, the couple also attended meetings of the Communist Party USA, which helped bring attention to the Scottsboro Boys case.
In 1933, Parks completed her high school education with encouragement from Raymond. At the time in Alabama, only 7% of Black people held a high school diploma. Subsequently, she worked as a nurse's aide at St. Margaret's Hospital, sewing to supplement her income. In 1941, she began working at Maxwell Air Force Base, a training facility for air force cadets. The base was fully integrated, and Parks was able to take public transit alongside her white coworkers on-base. However, when she returned home, she was required to use segregated buses, which frustrated her. According to Parks, her time at Maxwell "opened her eyes up", providing an "alternative reality to the ugly racial policies of Jim Crow".
Parks began attending meetings of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943 after seeing a picture of a former classmate of hers, Johnnie Carr, at a meeting. In December 1943, she was elected secretary of the chapter. Parks later explained that she accepted the role (which was considered a woman's position at the time) because "I was the only woman there, and they needed a secretary, and I was too timid to say no". She and Raymond were also members of the Voter's League, a local organization focused on increasing Black voter registration.
There were several obstacles preventing Black people from registering to vote in Alabama during this period, including poll taxes, literacy tests, intrusive questions on voter registration applications, and retaliation by employers. In 1940, less than 0.1% of Black Montgomerians were registered to vote. Encouraged by NAACP activist E. D. Nixon, Parks attempted to register three times beginning in 1943, succeeding in 1945.
In her capacity as secretary, Parks began investigating the gang rape of Recy Taylor, a Black woman from Abbeville, in 1944. After a grand jury declined to indict the perpetrators, Parks and other civil rights activists organized "The Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor", launching "the strongest campaign for equal justice to be seen in a decade", according to The Chicago Defender. The campaign, which received nationwide attention, put pressure on Governor Chauncey Sparks to take steps to prosecute Taylor's assailants. Sparks ultimately promised to investigate the case. The state failed to secure indictments for the assailants after a second grand jury hearing in 1945.
Despite this, historian Danielle L. McGuire describes the movement for justice in the Recy Taylor case as "the largest and best organized of many efforts to draw attention to the ruthless heart of the racial caste system", arguing that it "brought the building blocks of the Montgomery bus boycott together a decade earlier and kept them in place". Parks also organized support for Jeremiah Reeves, who was accused of raping a white woman in 1952. Reeves was ultimately executed in 1957.
Beginning in 1954, Parks worked as a seamstress for Clifford and Virginia Durr, a white couple. Politically liberal and opposed to segregation, the Durrs became her friends. They encouraged, and eventually helped sponsor, Parks to attend the Highlander Folk School, an activist training center in Monteagle, Tennessee, in the summer of 1955. There, Parks was mentored by the veteran organizer Septima Clark. Parks enjoyed her time at Highlander, where Black and white people worked, cooked, and lived together as equals. She later remembered it as one of the rare moments in her life when she felt no racial hostility and the first time in her adult life that she could envision a "unified society", describing how "people of all races and backgrounds" interacted harmoniously. In August 1955, she attended a Montgomery meeting concerning the lynching of Emmett Till. According to Theoharis, Parks was "heartened by the attention that people managed to get to the [Till] case", since the custom was to "keep things covered up".
Arrest and bus boycott
Montgomery buses: law and prevailing customs
Montgomery passed a city ordinance segregating streetcar passengers by race in 1900, before state-wide segregation was implemented. Montgomery's Black residents conducted boycotts against segregated streetcars between 1900 and 1902, coinciding with similar boycotts and protests in other southern cities. The boycotts resulted in an amendment to the city ordinance, which stipulated that "no rider had to surrender a seat unless another was available". However, many drivers failed to follow the ordinance. Altercations between bus drivers and Black passengers were frequent. According to historian Cheryl Phibbs, "bus drivers were given policeman-like authority to determine where racial divisions were enforced". They were also generally armed.
Black people constituted a majority of bus riders in Montgomery. According to the Women's Political Council, a Montgomery-based advocacy group, "three-fourths of the riders" on Montgomery buses were Black. Despite this, the front rows on each Montgomery bus were reserved for white passengers, while the back rows were designated for Black passengers. Segregation in the middle rows was enforced at the driver's discretion. While city ordinances did not require patrons to give up their seats, bus drivers frequently demanded Black passengers do so to accommodate white riders. Furthermore, Black passengers were sometimes required to pay their fares at the front of the bus, then exit and re-board through the back door.
In 1943, bus driver James F. Blake confronted Parks when she tried to take her seat from the front of the bus, insisting that she re-board in the back. Parks refused, telling Blake that she was "already on the bus and didn't see the need of getting off and getting back on when people were standing in the stepwell". After Blake grabbed her sleeve, Parks moved to the front of the bus, sitting in one of the rows reserved for white passengers, where she dropped her purse. Blake told her to "get off [his] bus", appearing poised to assault her. Parks admonished Blake, saying that he "better not hit [her]". She then exited the bus without re-boarding. After this encounter, she typically avoided riding on Blake's bus.
Refusal to move
Before December 1955, several people were arrested for declining to give up their seats on Montgomery buses. Maxwell Air Force Base employee Viola White was arrested in 1944, and Mary Wingfield was arrested in 1949. Teenager Mary Louise Smith was arrested in October 1954. In March 1955, Claudette Colvin, a fifteen-year-old student at Booker T. Washington High School, was also arrested. Other arrests included Aurelia Browder on April 29, 1955, and Susie McDonald on October 21, 1955.
Smith, Colvin, Browder, and McDonald were the plaintiffs in the 1956 lawsuit Browder v. Gayle. Many Black riders rallied around the idea of a boycott in the aftermath of Colvin's arrest. Black activists, including members of the WPC and NAACP, considered Colvin and Smith as test cases for a community bus boycott. The WPC was particularly focused on bus integration, partly because it was an issue that significantly affected Black women. Both the WPC and NAACP ultimately determined that Colvin and Smith were not suitable candidates for such a test case.
At 5:00p.m. on December 1, 1955, Parks left work and purchased several items from Lee's Cut-Rate Drug before walking to Court Square to wait for her bus. She boarded the bus at around 5:30. Lost in thought, she did not notice that James F. Blake was the driver. Parks later stated that if she had noticed Blake, she would not have boarded. She paid her fare and went to sit in the middle section of the bus, next to a Black man and across from two Black women. Her chronic bursitis was causing her significant discomfort, particularly in her shoulders.
As the bus traveled along its regular route, all the white-only seats in the bus filled up. The bus reached the third stop in front of the Empire Theater, and several white passengers boarded. One man was forced to stand. Blake then demanded that Black passengers in the middle row yield their seats. Those seated near Parks complied, but Parks remained seated. According to Parks:
When Blake asked if she intended to stand, Parks refused. Blake threatened her with arrest, to which Parks responded: "You may do that." She considered physically resisting, but decided against it, as she "didn't have any way of fighting back". Blake then left the bus and called his supervisor from a nearby payphone. His supervisor advised him to call the police. Two officers arrived on the scene, and, at the insistence of Blake, arrested Parks for violating the Montgomery municipal code.
According to biographer Douglas G. Brinkley, Parks's refusal to move was not premeditated. Parks's former classmate, Mary Fair Burks, also clarified that Parks was not acting on behalf of the NAACP, as she "would have done so openly and demanded a group action on the part of the organization". Parks said of her refusal to move:
After her arrest, Parks was taken to Montgomery city hall, where she filled out her arrest forms. She was then taken to the city jail, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. After repeated requests, she was granted permission to call home, notifying her mother of her arrest and asking for Raymond to come. E. D. Nixon was also informed of Parks's arrest and drove to the jail with Clifford and Virginia Durr, where he paid Parks's bail.
Montgomery bus boycott
thumb|alt=A black and white photograph of Rosa Parks as a middle-aged woman being fingerprinted by a police officer.|Parks was fingerprinted on February 22, 1956, after being arrested again alongside other organizers for orchestrating the Montgomery bus boycott.
After Parks's arrest, Nixon conferred with Clifford Durr about the possibility of adopting Parks's arrest as a test case. The two favored Parks because of her high standing in the Black community, her respectable manners, and her "firm quiet spirit", which, according to Durr, "would be needed for the long battle ahead". After being approached by Nixon to be a test case, Parks consulted with her family. Despite concerns about potential violent retaliation, she ultimately agreed. Attorney Fred Gray agreed to represent Parks in court, and WPC president Jo Ann Robinson was notified of the case. The WPC began planning for a one-day boycott of Montgomery buses on December 5, 1955, the day of Parks's trial. Under the guise of grading exams, Robinson collaborated with two students at Alabama State College to produce 35,000 leaflets announcing the boycott using a mimeograph provided by the college's business chair, John Cannon.
WPC members distributed the leaflets throughout the Black community, and Nixon enlisted the support of several members of the local Black clergy, including Martin Luther King Jr, who was the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. A planning meeting including members of the Black clergy was held at the church on December 2. While about half of the clergy in attendance left the meeting partway through, not wanting to be associated with politics, half stayed, and plans were drafted for alternative transportation during the boycott, including carpooling networks and collaboration with local taxi drivers. More leaflets were created at the meeting and, in the following days, were distributed by King and pastor Ralph Abernathy at bars and clubs. Many Black pastors announced the boycott in their churches on Sunday, December 4. It was further publicized by media coverage in the Montgomery Advertiser and on local television.
Despite attempts by Montgomery police officers to organize escorts for Black passengers, who they thought might fear retaliation from the Black community, bus ridership was low on the day of Parks's trial. Many Black residents walked or carpooled. The trial took place in the courtroom at Montgomery city hall, and almost 500 Black Montgomerians attended. Parks pleaded "not guilty" and, though she did not testify, two witnesses corroborated that there were seats available when she refused to move.
The prosecution moved to indict Parks on state charges rather than municipal charges. The presiding judge permitted the change, and Parks was found guilty of violating state law. She was fined $10, plus $4 in court fees (). The trial took between five and thirty minutes. Gray immediately filed to appeal the ruling, while Nixon addressed the crowd assembled outside, urging them to remain nonviolent and leave city hall.
While Parks handled telephone communications at Gray's office, boycott organizers gathered at Mount Zion AME Zion Church that afternoon to discuss prolonging the boycott and plan a mass meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church scheduled for that evening. They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to oversee the boycott, electing King as leader. The evening meeting was attended by 15,000 people. Nixon and King gave speeches, while Abernathy read the demands of the organizers to the crowd:
He then asked them to stand if they supported a continued boycott. The crowd overwhelmingly did so. Parks, hailed by King as a "heroine", asked if she should address the crowd, who repeatedly called for her to speak. However, she was told by "someone" that she had "said enough" and did not speak that evening. Theoharis interprets this as being indicative of the male-dominated culture of the civil rights movement.
At a December 6 press conference, King declared that the boycott would continue until all demands had been satisfied. At a meeting on December 8, city and bus company officials dismissed the MIA's demands. The MIA began developing a parallel transportation network for Black Montgomerians to support the boycott. Parks served temporarily as a dispatcher, coordinating transportation within the MIA's ride-sharing system. She was ostracized by her coworkers at Montgomery Fair, where she worked as a seamstress. In January 1956, she was fired.
A week later, Raymond was also fired from his job at Maxwell Air Force Base. That same month, Montgomery Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers initiated a "Get Tough" policy, harassing Black pedestrians and boycott participants. Boycott organizers, including Parks, received regular death threats. In February, a state grand jury declared the boycott illegal, indicting several of the boycott's leaders, including Parks, many of whom were arrested.