Rosa Louise McCauley Parks

 

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement, best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. She was also active in the black power movement and the support of political prisoners in the USA. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, the capital of Alabama state in America she rejected bus driver James F. Blake's order to vacate a front seat in a bus for a white female passenger. She was arrested. Parks challenged her arrest in court. She helped inspire the black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year. In November 1956 the court decided that bus segregation was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. But she was fired from her job and received death threats for years afterward. The United States Congress honored her as "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation and organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr. Born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama to Leona Edwards, a teacher, and James McCauley, a carpenter. In addition to African ancestry, one of her great-grandmothers was a part–Native American slave. In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, a barber from Montgomery. Rosa took numerous jobs, ranging from domestic worker to hospital aide. Parks died of natural causes on October 24, 2005, aged 92.