School History

Rosa Parks, born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, became a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement after her arrest on December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. This act of defiance sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a 382-day protest against segregated public transportation, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The boycott ultimately resulted in the Supreme Court ruling that racial segregation on buses was unconstitutional.

Raised in the segregated South, Parks experienced the harsh realities of racism from a young age. She joined the NAACP and worked to improve the lives of African Americans through numerous cases of racial injustice. After the boycott, Parks moved to Detroit, where she continued her activism and served on the staff of Congressman John Conyers.

In 1996, President Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 1999, she received the Congressional Gold Medal. Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development to educate young people about civil rights. She died in 2005 at 92, becoming the second African American and first woman to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol, a tribute to her lasting impact on American history.