Rosa Parks: The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement
In our Icon Series, we give thanks to those whose lives have laid the foundation for our journey toward justice and equity. In this season of gratitude and reflection, the New Hampshire Center for Justice & Equity celebrates the extraordinary life of Rosa Parks.
Rosa Parks. Image credits: Underwood Archives.
About Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 sparked the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott and ignited the broader Civil Rights Movement in the United States. A dedicated member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), she worked for years as an activist, advocate, and educator committed to desegregation, racial justice, dignity, and opportunity for all.
Early Life in the Jim Crow South
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama, to James and Leona McCauley (a carpenter and a teacher) who separated when she was 2. Parks was raised in Pine Level by her mother and grandparents, who had formerly been enslaved. She witnessed the constant threat of violence against Black families under Jim Crow, with her grandfather often guarding the family home at night to protect them from the Ku Klux Klan.
Parks attended a segregated school where Black students were forced to walk, while the city provided a bus for white students, before attending the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery at age 11. She then studied at a laboratory school led by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes, present-day Alabama State University, but left in the 11th grade in 1929, to help care for her sick grandmother. She worked as a cleaner and seamstress, eventually completing high school in 1933.
The Beginning of Rosa Parks’s Activism
In 1932, at the age of 19, Parks married Raymond Parks, a local barber and activist who was involved in the legal defense of the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping a white woman. As Rosa Parks became more interested in civil activism, Raymond encouraged her involvement in the Montgomery NAACP and the League of Women Voters.
By 1943, Rosa Parks had joined the Montgomery NAACP as a secretary, a position she held until 1956. During her time at the NAACP, her activism and community work grew steadily, as she witnessed the mistreatment of Black Americans. She was involved in educating young people about their rights and investigating racial violence, such as the murder of Emmett Till in 1955.
“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.”
Sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott
In the summer of 1955, Rosa Parks met civil rights activists Clifford and Virginia Durr, who sponsored her week-long stay at a training facility for social activists in Tennessee. There, she learned strategies to challenge segregation and methods to help Black people register to vote, doubling down on her commitment to civil rights.
The turning point took place on December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a crowded Montgomery city bus, defying segregation ordinances that expected Black riders to yield to white passengers. At the bus driver’s request, she was escorted off the bus and arrested, later being released on bail. Although people have tried to dismiss her bravery by claiming she didn’t want to move due to being tired after work, Parks reiterated that her noncompliance was deliberate.
Rosa Parks’s arrest set in motion the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by a coalition of community organizers and a young Martin Luther King Jr. The boycott lasted 381 days and mobilized most of the area’s 40,000 African American commuters, who walked or took cabs instead. The community effort paired with legal action was successful, culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court’s November 13, 1956, decision to declare Montgomery’s segregated bus seating unconstitutional. Parks celebrated the ruling by riding the bus in the front row.
At the same time, similar protests erupted across the South in solidarity with Rosa Parks. These took the form of sit-ins, eat-ins, swim-ins, and civil disobedience against segregated public spaces, earning Parks recognition as “the mother of the civil rights movement.”
Continuing the Movement Toward Justice
Following the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Rosa Parks’s public visibility in the civil rights movement, she and her husband lost their jobs and began receiving death threats. The couple moved to Detroit in 1957 whereParks continued her civil rights activism. She attended President Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and supported the final leg of the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965.
Between 1965 and 1988, Rosa Parks served in Congressman John Conyers’ office, co-founding the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development in 1987- mentoring the next generation of activists. In 1992, she published the autobiography Rosa Parks: My Story, recounting her life in the segregated South, and in 1995, she published Quiet Strength, centering on the role that religious faith played throughout her life.
Throughout her life, Parks received more than forty honorary doctorates and hundreds of awards, including the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal, the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize, and the Rosa Parks Peace Prize in Stockholm. In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, followed by the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999—two of the nation’s highest civilian honors. Time Magazine later named her one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
Honoring the Life and Legacy of Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks passed away in Detroit on October 24, 2005, at the age of 92. Her strength and firm conviction made her a catalyst for the civil rights movement and an enduring symbol of dignity in the face of injustice.
Her life and work are commemorated in museums, learning centers, and educational programs across the country, including the Rosa Parks Museum at Troy University in Montgomery, Alabama, built on the site of her historic arrest. In 2018, the state of Alabama declared December 1st "Rosa Parks Day" to commemorate her legacy.
In honoring Rosa Parks for NHCJE’s 2025 Icon Series, we celebrate a woman whose unwillingness to give in and acquiesce reminds us that change often starts with a single act of resistance and who continues to inspire movements for equality, representation, and justice today.
Learn more about Rosa Parks
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/rosa-parks - Womenshistory.org
https://www.biography.com/activists/rosa-parks - Biography.com
https://www.rosaparks.org/biography/ - Rosaparks.org
https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/rosa-parks/ - Encyclopedia of Alabama
Call to Action
Following in the footsteps of the civil rights icons who came before us, New Hampshire is facing unprecedented challenges, and NHCJE is preparing to fight the ‘good fight’.
Will you help us continue their legacy by investing in our work this Giving Tuesday?