Rosa Parks

Her grandfather Sylvester Edwards was the son of an enslaved woman and the plantation owner's son, and it was on his farm at Pine Level that she grew up, because her father was rarely home and her mother taught school in another town during the week. At six or seven she was picking cotton on Moses Hudson's place for 50 cents a day. She finished her first quilt at 10. The Klan was working the county, and she said afterward she heard of a lot of Black people found dead. She left school to nurse her grandmother and mother and went into white kitchens. In 1931 she met a barber named Raymond Parks, the first real activist she had ever met, and married him the next year.

The organizing came first and lasted far longer. She joined the Montgomery NAACP in 1943, took the secretary's desk, and got herself onto the voter rolls on the third attempt. In 1944 she went down to Abbeville to investigate the gang rape of Recy Taylor and helped build the national campaign around it, which one historian calls the boycott's scaffolding, assembled a decade early. In the summer of 1955 the Durrs sent her to the Highlander Folk School to train under Septima Clark. December, the arrest and the 381 days are BriefHistory's. Here is what they did to her.

Her coworkers at Montgomery Fair froze her out, and the store fired her in January 1956. Raymond lost his job at Maxwell Air Force Base a week later. The landlord raised the rent 10 dollars a month. In February, King had to authorize a few hundred dollars from the relief fund to keep them going, a state grand jury declared the boycott illegal and indicted her along with the other leaders, and the death threats were constant. She developed chronic insomnia, stomach ulcers and a heart condition. At the first mass meeting the crowd called for her to speak and someone told her she had said enough. In August 1957 she left Montgomery for Detroit — broke, threatened, and on the wrong side of a split in the movement's own leadership.

On August 30, 1994, a man named Joseph Skipper broke down the back door of her Detroit house, told the 81-year-old inside that he had chased off an intruder, and asked three dollars. When she paid he beat her and took the 103 dollars she had. She warned people not to read too much into it and said she understood the conditions that made him. Mike Ilitch quietly covered her housing from then on. In 2002 she was served an eviction notice she could no longer understand, and her church passed a collection while relatives said her money had been mismanaged. The statue went into the Capitol in 2013 — the first Black American in National Statuary Hall.

Rosa Parks's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Recy Taylor campaign other
  She investigated the case for the NAACP and helped build the committee behind it 1944
• Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development company
  Founded in Detroit with Elaine Eason Steele 1987
• Rosa Parks: My Story book
  Written with Jim Haskins 1992
• Quiet Strength book 1994
• Dear Mrs. Parks book
  Answers to letters from children 1997

• February 4, 1913 aged 0 Born at Tuskegee and raised on her grandparents' farm at Pine Level
• December 18, 1932 aged 19 Marries Raymond Parks at her mother's house He got her back into school, and she finished in 1933.
• 1943 aged ~30 Joins the Montgomery NAACP and becomes chapter secretary It took her three attempts, from 1943 to 1945, to get registered to vote.
• 1944 aged ~31 Investigates the gang rape of Recy Taylor in Abbeville Two grand juries refused to indict the men.
• Summer 1955 aged ~42 Trains at the Highlander Folk School under Septima Clark She called it the first time as an adult she felt no racial hostility.
• January 1956 aged 42 Fired by Montgomery Fair Raymond lost his job at Maxwell Air Force Base a week afterward.
• August 1957 aged 44 Leaves Montgomery for Detroit Money, threats and a rift inside the Montgomery Improvement Association.
• August 30, 1994 aged 81 Beaten and robbed of 103 dollars in her own house at 81 She asked the public not to read too much into the attack.
• 2013 aged ~100 Her statue is unveiled in National Statuary Hall The first Black American to be given a place there.

• Martin Luther King Jr. 1929–1968
  Baptist minister and civil rights leader whose nonviolent activism ended legal segregation in America. worked alongside
• Ella Baker 1903–1986
  Grassroots organizer who helped found the SNCC and shaped the civil rights movement behind the scenes. fellow organizer
• Thurgood Marshall 1908–1993
  First African American Supreme Court Justice and lead attorney in Brown v. Board of Education. argued the bus cases
• Malcolm X 1925–1965
  Civil-rights leader whose critique of racism and advocacy of Black dignity reshaped American political thought. later ally in Detroit
• John Lewis 1940–2020
  Freedom Rider and congressman whose activism was central to the civil-rights movement and voting-rights legislation. successor generation
• Ida B. Wells 1862–1931
  Journalist and anti-lynching crusader whose investigative reporting exposed racial terror in the South. predecessor in the work