Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks (google images)

There was this one day in the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the United States. That day was December 1, 1995 and on that day an unknown seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her seat to a white man who was a passenger on the bus. Her name was Rosa Parks. "She was arrested and fined for violating a city ordinance, but her lonely act of defiance began a movement that ended legal segregation." She was brave enough not to give up her seat on the bus because she knew it wasn't fair for blacks and whites to be separated.

She is my hero because she convinced the Congress or Government to stop segregation, and let blacks and whites ride the same buses. Martin Luther King Jr. protested with Rosa Parks to stop segregation. She was a leader. She would never give up at what she wanted and needed to do. She wasn't afraid of what someone would say about her or what she did. She was brave in many ways. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. were leaders because they led the Montgomery Bus Boycott. They stood up to what they believed in about the blacks and whites not being separated, and they weren scared to protest to it. All the blacks wouldnt ride the buses because they were on a strike.

Rosa Parks on a Bus (google images)

Rosa McCauley was her birth name at first before she got married. She was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her mother was a teacher, and her father was a carpenter. At age 2, she moved to her grandparent's farm in Pine Level, Alabama with her mother and younger brother, Sylvester. At age 11, she enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls. It was a private school for girls founded by a Liberal-minded woman from the northern United States. Rosa McCauley graduated from the all African-American Booker T. Washington High School in 1928, and attended Alabama State College in Montgomery for a short time. She married Raymond Parks, who was a barber, in 1932. They remained married and had no children. Rosa Parks worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people (NAACP) Youth Council, and in 1943 she was elected to serve as a secretary of the Montgomery Branch.

Rosa Parks with the President (google images)

Rosa Parks "also worked in a group who dismantled the barriers of racial segregation in education and public accommodations, but made little progress during the 1940�s and early 1950�s." "In the summer of 1955, white friends paid Rosa Parks expenses for two weeks to an interracial seminar at Tennessee's Folk School, a program designed to help people to train for civil rights activism." She worked as an aide to Michigan Congressman John Conyers, Jr. from 1966-1988. Her husband, Raymond Parks, died in 1977. Her hometown of Tuskegee, Alabama was a home to the Tuskegee Institute, which was led for many years by Booker T. Washington. He died in 1915 two years after Rosa Parks was born. In 1957 Parks moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she was a staff assistant (1965-88) for John Conyers. She was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

She led the Montgomery Bus Boycott by African American riders. She also was awarded the presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton in 1996. Rosa Parks was best known as the black woman arrested in 1955 for not giving up her seat to a white man. She was very courageous because she stood up and didn't give her seat to a white man. She was taught that it wasn't right. She stopped separation between the blacks and the whites. She died in October 24, 2005 in Detroit, Michigan.

The Timeline of Rosa Parks!
Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913.
In 1928: She attended Booker T. Washington School for ninth grade, but dropped out when her mother became seriously ill. For 10th and 11th grade she attended Alabama State Teachers College for Blacks.
In 1932: She marries Raymond Parks, a barber at age 19.
1934: She receives her high school diploma with the encouragement of her husband.
In 1943: she refuses to give up her seat and is ejected from the bus. This was 12 years before her historic stand. She tries to register to vote and is denied. She becomes a secretary of the Montgomery NAACP.
1945: Finally she receives a certificate for voting after 3 attempts.
1955: On December 1, she refuses to give up hr seat to a white man on a racially segregated bus. She is arrested, fingerprinted, jailed by police and fined $14. She stands trial and on December 5 is found guilty of breaking the segregation laws. The Montgomery Bus Boycott begins and will last 381 days. The boycott brings the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association.
In 1957: She, and her husband and her mother moved to Detroit where she works as a seamstress
1977: Her husband, Raymond Parks, at age 74, dies of cancer.
1980: The Detroit News and Detroit Public Schools establish the Rosa Parks Scholarships Foundation, honoring the 25th anniversary of her stand in Montgomery.
1987: She founds the Rosa Parks and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, which offers guidance to young blacks.
1988: She retires from John Conyers' office.
1992: Publishes her first book, "Rosa Parks My Story, with Jim Haskins.
1994: She is assaulted and robbed of $53 in the home she rents in Detroit. She then moves to the Riverfront Apartments. Her assailant is arrested and convicted.
1995: Speaks at the Million Man March in Washington 1998. She is hospitalized after a fall in her Riverfront apartment. The Rosa Parks Learning Center opens at Botsford commons.
1999: President Clinton awards her the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, the highest honor a civilian can receive in the United States.
2000: The Rosa Parks Museum and Library opens in Montgomery, Alabama, on the corner where she refused to give up her bus seat in 1955.
2005: Rosa Parks dies on October, 24 in her Detroit home.

How Rosa Parks Changed the World!

When I imagine looking at Rosa Parks
she is on a bus looking so innocent.
I could hear her soft voice talking
and protesting to the world.
She led the blacks and whites to
ride the same bus together.
I could sniff a soft smell when
I think of her in my mind.
The touch of her soft skin feels
like a baby's skin.
She is known as a brave woman
that stopped racism.