Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks was a woman with strong pride. She had a lot of courage. She started something very helpful for black people.


Rosa parks was born on February 4, 1913,in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her real name is Rosa Louise McCauley. She was later called the Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement. On December 1, 1955 she refused to obey a bus driver. The bus driver said that she had to give up her seat to make room for a white person.

Rosa Parks said no, and then the bus driver called the police. Rosa was arrested. She started the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It is one of the largest movements against racial segregation. After Rosa Prks was arrested she lost her job at a department store. Dr. Martin Luther King started a boycot. He asked black people to stop using buses and to start walking. Slowly, the bus company begins to lose money. 75 percent of its riders are black. They all have joined the boycott.

The company still doesn't change its segregation policies. The protesters are mostly poor and supporting large families. They can't afford to miss work and they will be back on the buses soon. Eventually the bus company is forced to cut back on the number of buses serving the city. It also raises the price of a ride from ten to fifteen cents.

Because the protesters are now shopping closer to home, the white owners of shops are starting to lose money. Some of the white people of Montgomery begin to harass and threaten anyone involved with the boycott. White people even bomed Dr. Martin Luther King's house. His wife and daughter was inside the house. Fortunately they didn't get hurt.



Rosa Parks died when she ninety-two on October 24, 2005, in her apartment on the east side of the city. A memorial service was held on October 29, 2005. In the evening the casket was transported to Washington, D.C., and it was taken aboard a bus similar to the one in when she made her protest. 50,000 people saw the casket there. The event was broadcast on television on October 31, 2005. Rosa's funeral service was seven hours long. It was held on Wednesday, November 2, 2005, at the Greater Grace Temple Church.


In 1979, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People awarded Parks the Spingarn Medal. She received the Martin Luther King Jr. She was put into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1983. On September 9, 1996, Bill Clinton presented Rosa with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1998, she became a part of the International Freedom Conductor Award given by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. The next year Rosa was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. She also received the Detroit-Windsor International Freedom Festival Freedom Award. Time magazine named Rosa one of the 20 most powerful figures of the twentieth century. In 2000, her home state awarded her the Alabama Academy of Honor and the first Governor's Medal of Honor for Extraordinary Courage. She was made an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority