Parks, Rosa (1913–2005)

African-American civil-rights activist. Born Rosa Louise McCauley, Feb 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama died Oct 24, 2005, in Detroit, Michigan; dau. of James McCauley (carpenter) and Leona (Edwards) McCauley (schoolteacher); received high school diploma, 1933; m. Raymond Parks, 1932 (died 1977); no children.

Veteran activist whose arrest for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, triggered a black boycott of the bus line and helped launch the civil-rights movement in US; was sent to Montgomery to live with relatives and attend Montgomery Industrial School for Girls (1924); became secretary of the local NAACP and was forced from city bus for using "white" door (Dec 1943); after repeated efforts, was registered to vote (1945); became adviser to NAACP Youth Council (1949); arrested and convicted of refusing, in violation of Alabama law, to surrender a bus seat to a white man (Dec 1955); participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–56), resulting in US Supreme Court affirmation of lower court decision declaring bus segregation to be unconstitutional (Nov 13, 1956); moved to Detroit (1957); participated in March on Washington (1963); participated in Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights (Mar 1965); worked in Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers (1965–88); known as "first lady of civil rights" or "mother of the civil rights movement." Received Spingarn Medal from NAACP (1979), Martin Luther King Jr., Nonviolent Peace Prize (1980), Presidential Medal of Freedom (1996), Congressional gold medal (1999), and 1st Governor's Medal of Honor for Extraordinary Courage from state of Alabama (Dec 1, 2000). Rosa Parks Library and Museum at Troy State University opened (Dec 1, 2000). After she died, was 1st woman to lie in state at the nation's Capitol Rotunda.

See also (with Jim Haskins) Rosa Parks: My Story (Dial, 1992) and (with Gregory Reed) Quiet Strength (Zondervan, 1994); Jo Ann Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It (U. of Tennessee Press, 1987); Douglas Brinkley, Rosa Parks (Lipper-Viking, 2000); and Women in World History.