American Activist Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, born on February 4, 1913, was an American civil rights activist and is best known for playing a crucial part in the Montgomery bus boycott.
She has received recognition from the US Congress as "the mother of the freedom movement" and "the first lady of civil rights."
On December 1, 1955, Parks refused bus driver James F. Blake's request to give up a row of four seats in the "coloured" section in favour of a White passenger once the "White" section was full in Montgomery, Alabama.
Although Parks wasn't the first person to fight against bus segregation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) considered her to be the greatest individual to carry out a legal challenge after her.
After being detained for violating Alabama's civil rights legislation requiring segregation, she inspired the Black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for more than a year. State courts dragged their feet on the subject. Still, the federal Montgomery bus case Browder v. Gayle led to a November 1956 ruling that bus segregation violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and is, therefore, illegal.
The Montgomery bus boycott and Parks' act of defiance both came to represent the cause. She organized and worked with civil rights activists like Edgar Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr., becoming an international symbol of the struggle against racial segregation. Parks was a seamstress at a neighbourhood department shop at the time and served as the NAACP's Montgomery chapter's secretary.
She had recently completed a program at the Tennessee-based Highlander Folk School, which trains advocates for racial equality and workers' rights. She endured death threats for years after being fired from her work, although she was ultimately universally praised for her actions. She relocated to Detroit soon after the boycott and briefly found employment there. She worked as John Conyers' secretary and receptionist from 1965 to 1988. Conyers is an African-American US Representative.
She was also active in the US political prisoner support movement and the Black Power movement.
Parks published her memoirs after she retired, and she persisted that there was still work to be done in the fight. They were fighting for justice. Parks earned numerous honours, including the Congressional Gold Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the NAACP Spingarn Medal, and a posthumous statue in the National Statuary Hall of the US Capitol.
She was the first woman to be laid to rest in the Capitol Rotunda after passing away in 2005. Rosa Parks Day is observed in California and Missouri on February 4, the day of her birthday, and in Texas, Oregon, and Ohio on December 1, the day of her arrest. She died on October 24, 2005.