Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. She was unable to graduate high school due to the illness of her grandmother Rose Edwards, so she received her high school diploma in 1934. Rosa Parks was nationally recognized as the "mother of the modern day civil rights movement" in America. It all began on December 1, 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white male passenger on a bus in Montogmery, Alabama. She began to enroll in the Montgomery Improvement Association, which was led by a few people including Martin Luther King, Jr. The association was formed for a boycott of the city-owned bus company. This boycott lasted 382 days and brought the cause from Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. to the attention of the world. In effect from this event, there was a Supreme Court Decision that outlawed racial segregation on public transportation. In 1977, after the death of Raymond Parks, Rosa's husband, she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. It was an anual summer program for teenagers called Pathways to Freedom. The teenagers would tour the country in buses, learning the history of their country and of the civil rights movement. President Clinton awarded Rosa Parks with the Presedential Medal of Freedom in 1996, and she received a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. Rosa Parks died at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005, and after her death, her casket was placed in the rotunda of the United States Capitol for two days. The purpose of this was so that the nation could pay its respects to the person who had changed many lives throughout her lifetime. Rosa Parks was the first person to lie in state at the Capitol besides any Presidents of the United States.