Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise Parks was born Februrary 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama to her parents James McCauley and Leona Edwards. Her father was a carpenter and her mother was a teacher. She was a small child, for she was sick most of her childhood. Her parents seperated, so she spent most of her time at her grandmother's farm. Rosa Parks wrote a autobiography that included her grandfather standing on his front porch with a shotgun while they watched the Ku Klux Klan march down the street; it taught her about prejudice against African Americans. She married Raymond Parks in 1932. 

In Montgomery, Alabama On December 1, 1955, Rosa Louise Parks, an unknown African American woman, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man during the segregation time. This happens to be one of the first extreme moves to the Civil Rights movement. She was tired from a long day of work as a seamstress, and did not want to move. She also hated being treated with disrespect by white people. Mrs. Parks was on the first row of the African American part of the bus; a white male walked on the bus and all the white seats were filled, so, as usual, the bus driver told the first row of the African American section to move, so the man could sit down. Rosa Parks refused to move from her current seat. The bus driver then had her arrested. Even though Parks was arrested, she was bailed out twenty-four hours later by Edgar Nixon, a friend and president of NAACP. Her largest impact was not giving up her seat, but she is known for other events also; She helped a friend open a sewing shop in 1961, and in 1987, she and her spouse, Ramond Parks, founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. In 1979, Rosa was given the NAACP's Spingarn Medal, and she also recieved the medal of freedom which was the highest award given to a civilian citizen.

In 1977, Rosa's husband died. In 2004, Rosa was diagnosed with progressive dementia; she later died on October 24, 2005. Three days after her death, all the Montgomery buses reserved their front row seats with black ribbons in order to apperciate her act of bravery, and it remained that way until she was put into her final resting place. Rosa never lost her equality for all men and women.