Rosa Parks: The First Lady Of Civil Rights

In 1955, on December 1, a black seamstress named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus even though it was the law. By standing up for what she believed in, she started an important boycott that would last over a year. Ms. Parks teamed up with Martin Luther King Jr. and formed an unstoppable team that would change black history forever. She earned the title "the first lady of civil rights" because of what she did to end segregation. Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee Alabama. Her parents’ names were Leona and James McCauley. When Rosa was two years old, she and her parents moved with her grandparents to live on a farm in the small town of Pine Level. Rosa soon had a baby brother named Sylvester. Her

Parks started school when she was six. There was one teacher for every sixty kids in the school she went to, which was for blacks only because the law said black kids have to go to separate schools than whites. Rosa got good grades and loved learning, but she never understood why blacks always had to be treated differently than white kids. She was outraged. These experiences during her schooling and her family’s past experiences inspired her to do something about black civil rights. When Rosa was eighteen years old. She met Raymond Parks. He was ten years older than her and worked at a Baber shop. Barber shops were places were black men would go and talk. Rosa and Raymond fell in love. They got married on their second date. Raymond is a lot smarter than Rosa thought. Raymond got Rosa to go back to get her high school diploma, so she did. She joined the NAACP (National Association for The Advancement of Colored People). During the day, Rosa would work as a secretary on an army base and at night she would volunteer at the NAACP. Voting was very important to Rosa too, because she believed that if you could vote it meant you had power. So she also joined the Montgomery Voters’

Parks ever started was the Montgomery Bus Boycott. She was returning home from her job as an assistant tailor on bus 2857 on the Cleveland Avenue line in Montgomery, Alabama. When she was told to give up her seat for a white man, she refused and was arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws. The night that Rosa got arrested, the women’s political council began a 13 month bus boycott. They printed 35,000 flyers telling people to tell people about the boycott. Rosa had decided and many other people agreed to never board a segregated bus again, until they changed the rules. She took a cab instead of a bus to work. On Monday, December 5, Rosa went to court, was found guilty and was fined $14, which she did not pay. They had a black leaders’ meeting and over 5,000 people showed up. People all around the country heard about it and joined. In December 1956, Rosa boarded her first bus in over a year. Rosa sat at the very front row and she was happy that she could do that