Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. She was one of four children and grew up in poverty. In her teenage years, she worked as a housekeeper and then as a secretary at Maxwell Air Force Base. During World War II, she volunteered as an assistant to the Red Cross and helped teach illiterate soldiers how to read and write.
After the war ended, Mrs. Parks moved to Montgomery and became active in civil rights activism. She joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). In 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man and was arrested for violating an ordinance requiring blacks to give up their seats to whites if there were no other seats available. This incident sparked a bus boycott that lasted 381 days and led to the desegregation of Montgomery’s public transportation system.
Mrs. Parks received many awards for her activism during this time period including: The Presidential Medal of Freedom (1996), The Congressional Gold Medal (1999), and inclusion on Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in world history (2000).
Mrs Mrs Parks died on October 24.
