Happy Birthday Rosa Parks!
Rosa Parks was born on this day in Tuskegee, Alabama. She is famous for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama, bus on December 1, 1955, launching the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott, which officially began on December 5, 1955. The boycott was a seminal event in the civil rights movement, helping to establish the tactic of direct action to end segregation.
For the events in the Browder v. Gayle case, in which the Supreme Court formally desegregated the Montgomery buses, see the arrest of Aurelia Boynton and three other women on March 2, 1955; the lower court decision on June 13, 1956 ordering the buses desegregated; and the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the lower court decision on December 17, 1956.
Contrary to popular mythology, Rosa Parks had been very active in civic affairs prior to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and she continued to be after the boycott ended. But because of hostility to her in Montgomery because of her leadership on the bus issue, she decided to leave and moved to Detroit where other family members lived. She became a staff member for Congressman John Conyers and played an important role in handling community issues in his Detroit district. She often said that she found as much race discrimination in Detroit as she had in Montgomery, Alabama, although it was a different kind than in the south.
Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005.
In 2016 the Library of Congress placed digital copies of the entire collection of the Rosa Parks Papers on its web site, making it readily available for browsing, learning, and research. The collection consists of 7,500 manuscript items and 2,500 photographs and prints. The collection is owned by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, who has loaned it to the Library of Congress for 10 years. (Howard Buffett s the son of the famous investor Warren Buffett.)
Read the detailed and fascinating biography: Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (2013)
Visit the Rosa Parks collection at the Library of Congress here.
View the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute: http://www.rosaparks.org/
Read her autobiography: Rosa Parks (with Jim Haskins), Rosa Parks: My Story (1992)
Watch a 1983 interview with Rosa Parks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3h6s9jxZtE
Read a biography: Douglas Brinkley, Rosa Parks (2000)