Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was born on February 4th, 1913 in Alabama, to a carpenter and a teacher, and was the first of two children. Her parents separated when she was young, and her mother raised her and her brother on her grandparents’ farm in Alabama. From a young age, she was subjected to numerous forms of racial discrimination, such as the Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan’s violent acts (and threats) against Black people. Her childhood helped her develop strong roots in the African Methodist Church, as she did not attend school till the age of 11. Even with formal schooling, her education was influenced by Jim Crow laws, which provided school bus services for white children, but not for black children who had to walk to school. She was forced to drop out of school at sixteen to care for her ill grandmother, and worked as a servant in affluent white neighborhoods, in order to earn an income. In 1932, Parks married a barber (Raymond Parks), who was also a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), an organization that Parks later joined. They did not have any children. She completed her high school diploma in the same year, during which she also worked as a seamstress.

On December 1st, 1955 on a city bus, a driver asked Parks and a few other Black passengers to give up their seats for standing White passengers. When she stood her ground, the police arrested her. This was not the first time James Blake (the city bus driver) and Parks had had an argument. Twelve years prior, she had entered the city bus from the front, defying a rule that only allowed Black people to enter the city bus from the back. When the driver pointed this out, Parks refused to comply and left the bus.

Although Parks is mainly known for her activism in the civil rights movement, she also actively fought against sexual assault in Alabama. At that time, the concept of rape only applied to White female victims. Thus, it was impossible for Black women to get justice against their assaulters. Despite this difficulty, and as a victim of attempted rape, Parks went on to inspire countless women to speak out about their assaults. She assisted on the establishment of “Joanne Little’s Defense Committee,” allowing Joan Little to become the first woman, in American history, to win a homicide case in which a victim of sexual assault used self-defense to kill her rapist in a prison cell. In regards to the case, Clarence Alligood was the 62 year old prison guard, who had a history of raping women prisoners. Her case demonstrated how a capitalist society treats Black women and girls; throughout the trial Joan was criminalized as the aggressor, yet protests showed up outside the trial, with signs protesting “Free Joan Little” and “Self defense is not a crime;” protesters even put together a country-wide “Free Joan Little Day” in 1975. Furthermore, Parks was an advocate for Black women’s suffrage. The Supreme Court had passed the 19th amendment in 1920, which allowed Black women in the South to vote. However, the amendment was limited to those who could afford to pay the voting poll tax. In response to this inequality, Parks fought for the enfranchisement of all Black women living in the South. Her valiant efforts eventually proved fruitful, as President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, prohibiting racial discrimination in voting.