Rosa Parks Biography Center
Directions:
Researchers often read about people who were pivotal during a certain time period.
1. Pick a reading below and read closely.
2. Ask yourself:
3. Respond to one of the questions above in your notebook.
1. Pick a reading below and read closely.
2. Ask yourself:
- Why am I reading about this person?
- Why did this person's life make it to the press?
- What makes this person unique or different?
- What challenges did this person overcome?
3. Respond to one of the questions above in your notebook.
Picture Book: If This Bus Could Talk: The Story of Rosa Parks by Faith Ringgold
Assorted Biographies of Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks, from Encyclopedia Brittanica Online
(1913–2005). By refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in the segregated South, Rosa Parks sparked the United States civil rights movement. Her action led to the 1955–56 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott, and she became a symbol of the power of nonviolent protest.
Rosa Louise McCauley was born on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala. She briefly attended Alabama State Teachers College (now Alabama State University) and in 1932 married Raymond Parks, a barber. She worked as a seamstress and became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), serving as secretary of the Montgomery chapter from 1943 to 1956.
On her way home from work one day in 1955, Parks was told by a bus driver to surrender her seat to a white man. When she refused, she was arrested and fined, an action that motivated local black leaders to take action. Emerging civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., led a boycott of the bus company that lasted more than a year. In 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision declaring Montgomery’s segregated bus seating unconstitutional.
Parks moved to Detroit, Mich., in 1957. She worked in the office of Michigan congressman John Conyers, Jr., from 1965 until she retired in 1988. She remained active in the NAACP and other civil rights groups. The Southern Christian Leadership Council established the Rosa Parks Freedom Award in her honor, and in 1979 the NAACP awarded her its Spingarn Medal. In 1987 she cofounded an institute to help educate young people and teach them leadership skills. An autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story, appeared in 1992. She was the recipient of two of the U.S. government’s most prestigious civilian honors—the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1996) and the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor (1999)—for her contributions to the civil rights movement. Parks died on Oct. 24, 2005, in Detroit.
Rosa Louise McCauley was born on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala. She briefly attended Alabama State Teachers College (now Alabama State University) and in 1932 married Raymond Parks, a barber. She worked as a seamstress and became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), serving as secretary of the Montgomery chapter from 1943 to 1956.
On her way home from work one day in 1955, Parks was told by a bus driver to surrender her seat to a white man. When she refused, she was arrested and fined, an action that motivated local black leaders to take action. Emerging civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., led a boycott of the bus company that lasted more than a year. In 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision declaring Montgomery’s segregated bus seating unconstitutional.
Parks moved to Detroit, Mich., in 1957. She worked in the office of Michigan congressman John Conyers, Jr., from 1965 until she retired in 1988. She remained active in the NAACP and other civil rights groups. The Southern Christian Leadership Council established the Rosa Parks Freedom Award in her honor, and in 1979 the NAACP awarded her its Spingarn Medal. In 1987 she cofounded an institute to help educate young people and teach them leadership skills. An autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story, appeared in 1992. She was the recipient of two of the U.S. government’s most prestigious civilian honors—the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1996) and the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor (1999)—for her contributions to the civil rights movement. Parks died on Oct. 24, 2005, in Detroit.