Rosa Parks
''Rosa Parks being fingerprinted at the police station in Montgomery, Alabama after being arrested for not giving up her seat to a white passenger
Rosa Parks is a noted civil rights activist. She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. She is mainly known for her December 1, 1955 arrest for refusing a bus driver's order to give up her seat to a white person and move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her arrest sparked protest against laws requiring racial segregation, in which she refused to She was arrested and tried, and the case resulted in the 1956 United States Supreme Court ruling that overturned the Alabama law. People in Montgomery followed her lead and boycotted the bus system for more than a year.
Although she is known for refusing to give up her bus seat, she was not the first to do so. The NAACP considered but rejected earlier protesters deemed unable/unsuitable to withstand the pressure of a legal challenge to segregation laws (See Claudette Colvin, Mary Louise Smith and Irene Morgan). It has also been speculated that since Rosa Parks worked for the NAACP, the organization was predisposed towards selecting her.
She served on the staff of U. S. Representative John Conyers (D, Michigan) from 1965-1988.
After a lifetime of productive activity in the cause of fighting racism, Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor in 1999 (other protesters did not receive this medal).
The Rosa Parks Library and Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, was dedicated in November 2001. It tells the story of the events leading up to her historic act of civil disobedience, and how her simple act connects to the larger tapestry of the civil rights movement.
