Rosa Louise McCauley was born on 4^th February 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her father (James) was a carpenter and her mother (Leona) a teacher.

In 1932 Rosa married Raymond Parks, a barber from Montgomery. After her marriage she took a number of jobs ranging from domestic worker to hospital aide. Then in December 1943, Rosa became active in the Civil Rights Movement, and joined the Montgomery Chapter of the NAACP, becoming volunteer secretary to its president, Edgar Nixon.

Living in an era dominated by Jim Crow Laws, these laws were active mostly in the Southern United States and restricted many of the new privileges granted to African Americans after the Civil War.

Under Jim Crow laws black and white people were segregated in virtually every aspect of daily life in the South, including public transportation.

Indeed, in Montgomery Alabama, the first rows of bus seats were reserved for white people, however depending upon how busy the bus was the driver would move a sign on the bus to indicate where whites and blacks were allowed to sit.

On 1^st December 1955, after a day at work at Montgomery Fair department store, Rosa boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus at around 6pm and sat in the “coloured” section of the bus.

As the bus went along its route it began to fill with white people, therefore the driver decided to increase the seating area for the whites. This meant that 4 black people including Rosa needed to move, in order for the whites to sit. Three of the black people did move and gave up their seats. However, Rosa who was tired of the treatment she and other African Americans received every day of their lives, decided not to move. She was subsequently arrested.

On the evening of December 1^st bail was posted by Edgar Nixon and Clifford Durr, the white lawyer whose wife had employed Parks as a seamstress.

Although other black women had been arrested earlier that year for similar acts of defiance, this time opponents of segregation were prepared to mount a counter attack. Dr Martin Luther King Jr was a pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, and he and others in the community decided to take action, and proclaimed that they wanted people to boycott the bus company.

On Monday December 5^th 1955, the day Parks was due in court, her trial lasted only 30 mins – she was found guilty. The boycott of the buses started, and although it was meant to last for one day, it actually lasted 382 days. Dozens of public buses stood idle for months, severely damaging the bus company’s finances, and eventually resulting in the Supreme Courts ruling in November 1956 which outlawed segregation on buses.

Rosa worked as a seamstress until 1965, when African-American US Representative John Conyers hired her as a secretary and receptionist for his congressional office in Detroit. She held this position until she retired in 1988.

In 2002, CBS released the movie The Rosa Parks Story, starring Angela Bassett. In addition information about the Civil Rights Movement can be found by visiting the National Civil Rights Museum, located at the Lorraine Motel, the site of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. www.civilrightsmuseum.org.

Rosa Parks, 4^th Feb 1913 – 24^th Oct 2005