Parks, Rosa (1913–2005)

Rosa Parks died October 24, 2005, at 92 years of age, just a little more than a month before the fiftieth anniversary of the event that came to define her life and make her the stuff of myth—her quiet refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a White man in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955. Her arrest triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott and led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down Jim Crow segregation laws in the South.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott propelled Martin Luther King, Jr., into a leadership position in the Civil Rights Movement, but Parks is often represented as the “mother” of the movement with King as the “father.” Her arrest is reenacted again and again on elementary school stages and in classrooms across the country, most often during African American History Month. One of the reasons why Parks's story has received so much attention is that it can be condensed down to very basic elements of time (the afternoon of December 1, 1955), space (a bus in Montgomery), and affirmation of rights (Parks's refusal to give up her seat).

In 1999, Parks received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton. In introducing Parks, the president said, “For most of us alive today, in a very real sense the journey began 43 years ago.” Parks has been transformed into a national hero for everyone, a member of the canon of heroes inaugurated into the newly revised multicultural history of the nation. The phrases “a seat on the bus” and “the back of the bus” have become metaphors used again and again by many social groups—from women, to gays and lesbians, to the physically challenged—as part of their struggle for equal rights.

Role in Civil Rights

At the time of her arrest, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and [Page 1029]had been active in the Civil Rights Movement in the city for more than a decade. By the early 1950s, the NAACP became committed to overthrowing Jim Crow segregation laws in the city through a combination of civil disobedience and legal challenges, and public busing was selected as a primary scene of the battle. Not only were Blacks required to sit in a special section in the back of the bus, they also were required to give up their seats to Whites when buses were crowded and there were not enough seats for everyone to sit. During the summer of 1955, Parks, along with King, visited Highlander Academy in Monteagle, Tennessee, where they met with both Black and White political activists under the leadership of Myles Horton to plan for civil disobedience.

Rosa Parks. In this often reproduced photograph, civil rights hero Rosa Parks is shown defying de jure segregation by sitting in the White section of the bus that launched the Montgomery Alabama, bus boycott in 1955. Actually, while the event was very real, there were no journalists present at the time and this iconic photography was a re-creation with an Associated Press reporter seated behind Rosa Parks.

Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-109643.

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