Rosa+Parks

By Tatiana & Kaiya Grade 6

Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. As a young child, Rosa went to school at the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls. She also worked in the fields picking corn, peanuts and potatoes. Her school would close three months earlier than the white kids’ school, so the kids in her school could work all day long. Rosa’s mother wanted her to have a better life than all those other people. So she put her in a private school near Montgomery. Rosa’s family was fairly poor, and Rosa would spend after school cleaning and dusting classrooms to help pay for tuition. By the time she was in eleventh grade, Rosa’s mother and grandmother had become very sick. Rosa did not finish high school until after she was married.

After Rosa’s mother and grandmother got better, she went back to Montgomery to get a job making t-shirts. During that time in Montgomery, she met Raymond Parks and was impressed with him and his work. In December, 1932, they got married and both joined the NAACP and the Montgomery Voters League. They had a strong marriage until he died in 1977.

Rosa’s best contribution to the Civil Rights Movement came on December 1, 1955. Rosa was sitting in the middle of a bus. The bus was segregated: the back was for Blacks, the front w as for whites but the middle was for both unless the white section was filled up. So Rosa was told to get out of her seat and move to the back. Rosa opted not to move at all. The bus driver called the police, and Rosa was put in a jail cell.

Many Black leaders were outraged at what happened. The Black leaders started to protest and that’s how the Montgomery Bus Boycott started. The boycott lasted 381 days until Rosa’s case was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The judges decided that Blacks and whites would not be segregated on buses any more. Rosa made a big accomplishment when she refused to give up her seat. Later, Rosa moved to Detroit, Michigan to find a calmer and quieter life. She still continued making speeches and raising money for the NAACP. When she was seventy four years old, she founded a school for Blacks in Detroit. It was named the Rosa and Raymond Park Institute for Self-Development. Even though R osa lived a hard life, it was also a happy life for her. She accomplished many great things.



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