Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley later know as Rosa Parks was born on February 4th, 1913 in Tuskegee Alabama to James McCauley and Leona Edward a carpenter and a teacher. As a child she was very small and suffered poor health and chronic tonsillitis. After her parents divorced she moved to grand parents to Pine Level. She lived on a farm with her grand parents mother and younger brother Sylvester. She attended a rural school up to the age of eleven and then enrolled in an industrial school for girls in Montgomery. She took academic and vocational courses, but was forced to quit due to here grandmothers health. During here life time African Americans were not given the freedom that white people had. She was strongly against the diversity. As a seamstress she used the bus regularly. In 1932, Rosa parks got married to a barber named Raymond Parks, an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Rosa Parks with the help of her husband Raymond Parks finished her high school degree in 1933. She then became actively involved in civil rights issues my joining the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943, serving as the secretary to the president, E.D. Nixon until 1957. Then when she lost here job and was unable to get another one in Montgomery, she and Raymond moved to Virginia. When Rosa Parks was no longer recognized as being against the law she was awarded many awards. She received the Rosa Parks Peace Prize in 1994, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1966, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. There is also a library and museum dedicated to her in Montgomery, Alabama. Rosa Parks passed away on October 24, 2005 at the age of 92. Her casket was placed in the rotunda of the United States Capitol for two days. This is a symbol of honor usually only reserved for Presidents when they die.