Rosa Parks was an African-American civil rights activist best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott.
On December 1, 1955, she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, leading to her arrest.
This act of defiance sparked the 13-month Montgomery bus boycott, a seminal event in the civil rights movement that ultimately led to the desegregation of public transportation.
Parks received numerous accolades for her courageous stand, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and being named the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.
Siblings
Parks had one sibling, a brother named Sylvester James McCauley born on August 20, 1915 in Tuskegee, Alabama.
He was Parks’ younger brother.
After Parks moved to Detroit in 1957, she reconnected with Sylvester. Parks’ nieces and nephews were her only family.
The family called her “Auntie Rosa” and she was a devoted mother figure to them.
Activism career
Parks was a dedicated civil rights activist who began her activism in the 1930s, working alongside her husband Raymond Parks in support of the Scottsboro Boys.
In 1943, she became the secretary of the Montgomery NAACP branch, a role she held for ten years.
Her most famous act of defiance occurred in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery.
This act sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a significant event in the Civil Rights Movement that lasted over a year.
After relocating to Detroit in 1957, Parks continued her activism by co-founding the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in 1987, aimed at educating young people about civil rights history.
She also served on the board of Planned Parenthood and spoke out against housing discrimination and police misconduct.
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Throughout her life, Parks received numerous awards for her activism, including the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal.
Known as “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement,” Parks remained active in civil rights causes until her passing in 2005 at the age of 92.
Awards
Parks received numerous awards and accolades throughout her life, recognizing her significant contributions to civil rights and social change.
Some of her notable honors include the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1979, the Martin Luther King Jr. Award in 1980, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in 1996.
In 1999, Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and the Detroit-Windsor International Freedom Festival Freedom Award.
The following year, she received the Governor’s Medal of Honor for Extraordinary Courage from the State of Alabama.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she was honored with the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal, UAW’s Social Justice Award and Martin Luther King, Jr., Nonviolent Peace Prize.
In the 1990s, Parks received a bust from the Smithsonian, the Rosa Parks Peace Prize in Stockholm and the Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton.
The Rosa Parks Library and Museum opened in Montgomery in 2000, and a statue of her was placed in National Statuary Hall in 2006.