Feisty Female Friday: Rosa Parks
The FFF this week is Rosa Parks.
Rosa Parks, born in AL, was an American civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her seat on a public bus precipitated the Montgomery bus boycott in AL, which became the spark that ignited the civil rights movement in the US.
Rosa Louise McCauley spent much of her early life with health issues and was educated at home by her mother, who also worked as a teacher at a nearby school. Rosa helped with chores on the farm and learned to cook and sew. The Ku Klux Klan was a constant threat to all Black families and Rosa’s was no different. Sometimes she would stay awake and keep watch with her grandfather at night, awaiting a mob of violent white men. The house’s windows and doors were boarded shut, the children often going to bed with their clothes on so that they would be ready if the family needed to escape.
When Rosa did enter school, she had to attend a segregated school with large size classes to which she also had to walk while white children had smaller class sizes and were bused. She next entered the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, where Black girls were taught regular school subjects alongside domestic skills and attended teacher’s college for 10th and part of 11th grade but was forced to leave school because of an illness in the family. Rosa soon began cleaning the houses of white people. All things in her life, public transportation, drinking fountains, restaurants, and schools, were segregated under Jim Crow laws.
One day after a long day at work, Rosa was riding a crowded Montgomery city bus when the driver, upon noticing that there were white passengers standing in the aisle, asked her and other Black passengers to surrender their seats and stand. Three of the passengers left their seats, but Rosa refused. She was arrested and fined $10 for the offense and $4 for court costs, neither of which she paid. Instead, she accepted the Montgomery NAACP chapter president’s offer to help her appeal the conviction and thus challenge legal segregation in AL.
A boycott of the municipal bus company soon began and since African Americans constituted some 70 percent of the ridership, the absence of their bus fares cut deeply into their revenue. The boycott lasted 381 days with people outside Montgomery embracing the cause by protesting segregated restaurants, pools, and other public facilities all over the US. Her case was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court which upheld a lower court’s decision declaring Montgomery’s segregated bus seating unconstitutional. A court order to integrate the buses was issued and the boycott ended. For her role in igniting the successful campaign, Rosa became known as the “mother of the civil rights movement.”
According to her autobiography, she was not tired physically, or no more tired than she usually was at the end of a working day, and was not old, although some people have an image of her as being old then. Rosa was only 42 but was tired of giving in but was not the first Black woman to refuse to give up her bus seat for a white person. She however had access to resources and publicity that the other women had not had. It was her case that forced the city of Montgomery to desegregate city buses permanently. Rosa soon moved with her husband and mother to Detroit, where she worked on the staff of Michigan Congressman John Conyers, Jr. where she remained active in the NAACP.
The SCLC established an annual Rosa Park Freedom Award in her honor. Rosa cofounded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development to provide career training for young people and offer teenagers the opportunity to learn about the history of the civil rights movement. She received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Rosa’s autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story, included her thoughts that the US was still failing to respect and protect the lives of Black Americans.
After Rosa died, her body lay in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, an honor reserved for private citizens who performed a great service for their country. For two days mourners visited her casket and gave thanks for her dedication to civil rights. She was the first woman and only the second Black person to receive the distinction. You can see her statue in the National Statuary Hall alongside former US presidents, American heroes, and important historical figures from each state. Rosa has a song by Outkast that details her life and her civil rights work.
Her favorite song, Oh Freedom, was a reminder of the physical and emotional toll of her fight for justice and equality, which still exists in our world today. She has a street and chapel named after her in Detroit, was the subject of movies, has her own stamp, and always dreamed of freedom and peace for everyone everywhere. Rosa was married, had no children, and is buried in Detroit.