Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, also known as “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement”, was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. She was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama.

McCauley lived in a farm with her grandparents, mother and brother and attended rural schools until the age of eleven. Then she attended a laboratory school, but dropped out because she had to take care of her ill grandmother and mother.

In 1932, she married Raymond Parks and he convinced her to finish high school, later on she finished high school in 1933 and became one of the 7% of African Americans who had a high school diploma. Later on, in December 1943, she joined her husband in NAACP and became secretary until 1945.

In the 1900’s, Montgomery has passed a law where they had to seperate bus passengers by race, and always had colored people in the back and white in the front. One day in December 1, 1955 around 6pm, Parks boarded a bus after working all day, soon the bus was filled and the colored people were demanded to move to the back and stand, so the white people could sit. However, Parks stayed in her seat and watched the bus driver call the police on her, still refusing to give up her seat. Parks was found guilty and was charged, but she didn’t give up, starting a boycott and continued it for 381 days, damaging the bus transit company’s finances.

Parks became an icon for Civil Rights Movement and got a new job as a hostess in an inn at Hampton Institute, a black historical college. Later on in the 1970’s, Park’s family was plagued with illness and her husband died of throat cancer in 1977. She decided to rededicate herself again to civil rights and educational organizations in 1980 and then died on October 24, 2005 due to natural causes at age 92.