Rosa parks life history
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President Nelson Mandela is also listed among the select few of world leaders who have received the medal.
In the winter of 2000 Mrs. Parks met Pope John-Paul II in St. Louis, MO and read a statement to him asking for racial healing.
On April 14, 2005, the case was settled. However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of moving back the sign separating Black and white passengers and, if necessary, asking Black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers.
Parks’ mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama, to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards. There, Parks made a new life for herself, working as a secretary and receptionist in U.S. Representative John Conyer’s congressional office. The following year, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch.
The city’s bus ordinance didn’t specifically give drivers the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone, regardless of color. Everybody move to the back of the bus.”
In 1999, Parks filed a lawsuit against the group and its label alleging defamation and false advertising because Outkast used Parks’ name without her permission. Once, her grandfather Sylvester stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street.
Young Rosa often fought back physically against bullying from white children, noting: “As far back as I remember, I could never think in terms of accepting physical abuse without some form of retaliation if possible,” according to The Rebellious Life of Mrs.
Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis.
In Her Own Words
Taught to read by her mother at a young age, Rosa attended segregated schools throughout her education. Her brother, Sylvester McCauley, now deceased, was born August 20, 1915. Some people carpooled and others rode in Black-operated cabs, but most of the estimated 40,000 African American commuters living in the city at the time had opted to walk to work that day—some as far as 20 miles.
Due to the size and scope of, and loyalty to, the boycott, the effort continued for several months.
Blake stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row, asking four Black passengers to give up their seats. After undergoing a tonsillectomy in the fifth grade, she experienced temporary blindness, but her health improved soon afterward, according to Rosa Parks: A Life in American History by Darryl Mace.
Early in life, Rosa experienced racial discrimination and activism for racial equality.
I did a lot of walking in Montgomery.
Representative Julia Carson of Indianapolis, Indiana introduced H. R. Bill 573 on February 4, 1999, which would award Mrs. Rosa Parks the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor if it passed the House of Representatives and the Senate by a majority. If the Black passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed.
Three of the other Black passengers on the bus complied with the driver, but Parks refused and remained seated.
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Colin McEvoy joined the Biography.com staff in 2023, and before that had spent 16 years as a journalist, writer, and communications professional. The couple began receiving constant death threats, and Raymond started sleeping with his gun for protection as a result, according to The Rebellious Life of Mrs.
Rosa Parks.
Unable to find work, they eventually left Montgomery and moved to Detroit with Parks’ mother. She held the post until 1957. In February, 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development with Ms. Elaine Eason Steele in honor of her husband, Raymond (1903-1977).
President Clinton signed it into law on May 3, 1999. When she completed her education in Pine Level at age eleven, her mother, Leona, enrolled her in Montgomery Industrial School for Girls (Miss White’s School for Girls), a private institution.