On Feb. 4, 1913, Rosa (McCauley) Parks was born. She eventually would change the landscape of the civil rights movement.
Most famous for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus, Parks acted as an equal rights champion long before that day in 1955.
She was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, and later moved with her mother to live with grandparents in rural Alabama. Both of her grandparents were former slaves and advocates for civil rights.
She remembered seeing school buses for white children pass by while she had to walk to a one-room segregated schoolhouse. She remembered her grandfather standing guard with a shotgun while the Ku Klux Klan marched by their house. She remembered being bullied by white children in her neighborhood — and fighting back.
These formative childhood memories set her up for a life of activism. She and husband Raymond Parks joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where she served as a secretary to the organization’s president.
Credit: Branden Camp / Special
Credit: Branden Camp / Special
On the side, Parks worked as a seamstress at a downtown Montgomery department store. This was where she worked when she famously refused to give up her seat in the “colored section” of the bus for a white standing passenger.
She shared details of this day in her autobiography, “My Story”:
"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in." — Rosa Parks
This small act of civil disobedience sparked a new wave of civil rights activism in Montgomery. Rosa Parks’ refusal to stand and her subsequent arrest led to a city-wide bus boycott. Martin Luther King Jr., at the time a local pastor, helped to spearhead the boycott, putting his name in the national spotlight.
»RELATED: Rosa Parks 60 years later: She didn't act alone
According to nps.org, Montgomery City Lines lost between 30,000 and 40,000 bus fares each day during the boycott. An estimated 90% of African American residents in Montgomery opted to carpool, bike or walk during the yearlong boycott.
In November 1956, the Supreme Court declared segregation laws on public transportation unconstitutional.
For the rest of her life, Parks used her platform to continue to advocate for civil rights. She and her husband moved to Detroit, where Rosa worked for Congressman John Conyers. She also gave speeches, participated in marches and published her autobiography.
Credit: National Archives
Credit: National Archives
Tuesday would have been her 107th birthday, and the nation is remembering her on Twitter.
According to WRGX news, The Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery is offering free admission Tuesday in celebration, complete with birthday cake and a 1950s bus replica.
»MORE: 7 pivotal historic sites along Alabama's Civil Rights Trail
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