Rosa Parks: The Spark of Civil Rights Movement

Throughout United States history, there have been hundreds of influential people that have impacted many changes in the nation. Rosa Parks is one of many who have changed the lives of African Americans. Parks was an outstanding woman who stood up for what she believed in, and she never let anyone tell her different. Parks was a kind hearted, selfless person and for that she will always be remembered. Parks endured many hardships, not only during her childhood but also during her adult life, and gave rise to the civil rights movement through a boycott.
Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her parents, James and Leona McCauley, separated when she was just two years old. Rosa’s mother moved Rosa and her brother, Sylvester, to Pine Level, Alabama to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards. Her grandparents were both former slaves and strong advocates for racial equality. Rosa Parks’ childhood was full of experiences with racial discrimination. Parks learned to be resilient at an early age. At a young age, she was taught to read by her mother, and attended a segregated, one room school in Pine Level, that had grades first through sixth. The schools for African-Americans were not as privileged as the white schools. The school supplies for

In 1929, she left school to care for her sick grandmother and mother. Rosa had not finished high school, as she was only in the eleventh grade at the time she quit school. Instead of returning to her studies, she got a job at a shirt factory in Montgomery. In 1932, at the age of nineteen, she met and married Raymond Parks; and a year later, with the support of her husband, Rosa earned her high school degree. In 1943, she joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, serving as the chapter’s youth leader as well as secretary to NAACP president E.D. Nixon for fourteen