Profile of the Day: Rosa Parks

Posted February 4, 2021 by Amanda | No Comment

On this day in 1913, civil rights icon Rosa Parks was born.

Image: Rosa Parks / Library of Congress

Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama to James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona Edwards, a teacher. In 1932, she married Raymond Parks, a barber and active member of the NAACP. Parks would join the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943 and serve as the chapter secretary.

On December 1, 1950, Parks was thrust into the national spotlight when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus to a white passenger. Her act of defiance and arrest set in motion one of the most significant events of the American Civil Rights Movement, the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The city-wide boycott of the Montgomery public transportation system lasted for 381 days and eventually led to the U.S. Supreme Court to declare that the segregation of public transportation was unconstitutional. In 1996, Parks was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Parks died on October 24, 2005 at the age of 92.

Explore Rosa Parks’s family tree on Geni and share how you’re connected to the American civil rights icon.