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Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, born on February 4th, 1913 & died on October 24, 2005, was an African American civil rights activist whom the U.S. Congress later called the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement.”
On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks, age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Parks’ act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.
At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers’ rights and racial equality. Parks eventually received many honors ranging from the 1979 Spingarn Medal to the Congressional Gold Medal, a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. Her death in 2005 was a major story in the United States’ leading newspapers. She was granted the posthumous honor of lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda.
Parks resided in Detroit until she died at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005, about 7:00PM EDT, in her apartment on the east side of the city. She had been diagnosed the previous year with progressive dementia.
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