Early Life
Rosa Parks was born on February 4th, 1913 as Rosa Louise McCauley to leona and James McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama. She had a younger brother named Sylvester, also. When her parents split, she moved with her mother to a city just outside the capital of Montgomery, with her grandparents. She went to rural schools for eleven years, then went to the Industrial school for girls. She then went to a labratory school founded by the Alabama State Teachers College for negroes, where she soon dropped out to take care of her ill grandmother and soon after, her own mother.
Parks recalled going to elementary school in Pine Level, where school buses took white students to their new school and black students had to walk to theirs:
"I'd see the bus pass every day... But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world."
Although her autobiography recounts early memories of the kindness of white strangers, she could not ignore the racism of her society. When the Klu Klux Klan marched down the street in front of their house, she recalls her grandfather guarding the front door with a shotgun. The Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, founded and staffed by white northerners for black children, was burned twice by arsonists.
In 1932, Rosa married Raymond parks, a barber from Montgomery. He was a member of the NAACP attempting to collect money to support the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, who were falsely accused of raping two white women.
At her husbands urge, she finished her high school studies in 1933, when less than 7% of African Americans had a high school diploma. She also successfully voted on her third try.
In December 1943, Parks became active in the civil rights movement, Joined the NAACP, and was elected secretary.
"I'd see the bus pass every day... But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world."
Although her autobiography recounts early memories of the kindness of white strangers, she could not ignore the racism of her society. When the Klu Klux Klan marched down the street in front of their house, she recalls her grandfather guarding the front door with a shotgun. The Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, founded and staffed by white northerners for black children, was burned twice by arsonists.
In 1932, Rosa married Raymond parks, a barber from Montgomery. He was a member of the NAACP attempting to collect money to support the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, who were falsely accused of raping two white women.
At her husbands urge, she finished her high school studies in 1933, when less than 7% of African Americans had a high school diploma. She also successfully voted on her third try.
In December 1943, Parks became active in the civil rights movement, Joined the NAACP, and was elected secretary.