Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, a lone black lady sitting on a city bus made a decision that drew nation wide attention. This was Rosa Parks. The south was heavily segregated, leaving few opportunities open to black people. One of the opportunities denied to them was the ability to sit anywhere they wanted on city busses. If a white person needed a seat they were to relinquish theirs.

Rosa's early childhood, her work with the NAACP, and her involvement in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, made her one of our nation's most significant historical figures. Rosa was a unique individual who realized the need for change and had the courage to act upon her convictions.

Rosa Louise McCauley was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama to James and Leona McCauley. Her father was a carpenter and her mother was a school teacher. At the age of two she moved, with her mother and younger brother Sylvester, to her grandparent's farm in Pine Level, Alabama.

For her younger education, Rosa attended a segregated rural school. At the age of eleven Rosa enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for girls. Which was also known as ""Miss Whites school", this name was adopted after, Alice L. White, the president and cofounder of the school. In this school all of the students were black and all of the teachers were white women from the North.

She then attended Booker T. Washington Junior High School in Montgomery. She also participated in a high school. program at Alabama State Teachers College. She dropped out at the age of sixteen to care for her grandmother, and then her ailing mother. Her grandmother died soon after. Rosa married her husband Raymond Parks a 29-year-old barber, in December of 1932.

In 1933 Rosa Parks received her high school diploma. She then helped to support her family by sewing and doing other jobs that became available. She and her husband settled in Montgomery, where they worked for many years with the NAACP, to improve the lot of African Americans.

Raymond Parks was a member and had been active a long time in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This organization had been founded to improve the conditions for blacks in the United States.

In 1943 Rosa became a member of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She served as a secretary to the president of the NAACP, until 1956. IN the same year, 1943, Rosa made her first attempt to register to vote. She was unsuccessful until her third try in 1945. Also at this time Rosa took her first stand against a bus driver, when she defied a local ordinance which stated, colored people should enter a bus only from the back door.

On December 1, 1955, continuing her staunch resistance against segregation issues, Rosa once