Civil rights icon Rosa Parks was born on this day in 1913. She grew up on a family farm outside of Montgomery, Ala., experiencing from a young age the kind of mistreatment that would lead her to Civil Rights activism as an adult.
She grew up going to various schools for Black children but was forced to leave to clean houses for white people for her family to make ends meet. At home, Black families in her area were often menaced by the Ku Klux Klan, creating a climate of fear in the area, sometimes even forcing the children to go to bed with their clothes on so they could escape quickly on nights that seemed likely to be dangerous.
Rosa eventually married Raymond Parks and became a seamstress. It was in 1955 that she earned her place in history by refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus for a white person when asked, as was required by law. She was arrested and fined a total of $14. Refusing to pay, she worked with the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (of which she was a member) to appeal her conviction, drawing national attention.
The Montgomery Improvement Association, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., took up her cause and declared a boycott of the Montgomery bus system, deeply wounding the system's revenue. A wave of boycotts against other segregated institutions in support of Parks swept the country as her case proceeded. Eventually, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision finding the segregated bus seating unconstitutional.
You can read more about the life of Rosa Parks at the Encyclopedia Britannica.
