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Short Biography of Rosa Parks
Date of Birth: Born on February 4, 1913
Place of Birth : Tuskegee, Alabama
Parents: Father - James McCauley, a carpenter
Mother:
Leona McCauley, a teacher
Background Facts, Information & Ancestry :
Rosa Parks was of African-American, Cherokee-Creek
and Scots-Irish ancestry
Segregation and Civil
Rights Background Facts:
1875: Civil Rights Act of 1875
Under Amendment XIV, Congress passes a law that
makes racial discrimination in public accommodations
illegal.
1883: Civil Rights Act overturned. The
Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875
unconstitutional and that the Fourteenth Amendment
forbids States, but not citizens, from
discriminating
1896: Plessy v. Ferguson case upheld a
Louisiana law that required whites and blacks to
occupy separate railroad cars. Established "separate
but equal" doctrine.
Segregation of public transportation.
Tennessee segregated railroad cars, followed by
Florida (1887), Mississippi (1888), Texas (1889),
Louisiana (1890), Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, and
Georgia (1891), South Carolina (1898), North
Carolina (1899), Virginia (1900), Maryland (1904),
and Oklahoma (1907)
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1913 |
This
Rosa Parks timeline starts on February 4, 1913 when
Rosa Louise McCauley was born in
Tuskegee, Alabama. Her parents were James McCauley,
a carpenter and Schoolteacher Leona McCauley
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1915 |
August
20: Her brother, Sylvester McCauley was born |
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1917 |
The
family moved from Tuskegee to Pine Level, Alabama |
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1919 |
Rosa
received some of her education at home and also
attended the rural school in Pine Level |
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1924 |
Rosa is
enrolled in Montgomery Industrial School for Girls
(Miss White's School for Girls), a private
institution
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1928 |
1928:
She attends Booker T. Washington High School for
ninth grade, but drops out when her grand mother
becomes seriously ill and subsequently dies
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1929 |
For
10th and 11th grades, she attends Alabama State
Teachers College for Negroes. |
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1932 |
December 18: Marries Raymond Parks, a barber, at 19.
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1934 |
Receives her high school diploma with the help and
encouragement of her husband Raymond Parks |
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1934 |
1935:
Baltimore Court rules Donald Murray must be admitted
to white law school |
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1939 |
WW2 begins |
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1943 |
12
years before her famous stand Rosa Parks bravely
refuses to give up her seat and is ejected from a
racially segregated bus. She then tries to register
to vote and is denied. She becomes secretary of the
Montgomery NAACP (National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, an organization
formed to promote use of the courts to restore the
legal rights of black Americans)
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1945 |
WW2 ends
Rosa Parks finally receives certificate for voting
after three attempts
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1946 |
June 3: The U.S. Supreme Court
banned segregation in interstate bus travel
Aug 10: Race riots occur in Athens, Alabama
September 29: Race riots erupt in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
December 5: The National Committee on Civil Rights
is created by President Harry Truman to investigate
racism in America
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1947 |
April 9: "Freedom Riders" tested the laws of
interstate bus travel in the segregated South
April 15:
Jackie Robinson
became the first African-American to play major
league baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers
Committee on Civil Rights under President Truman
condemn racial injustices towards Blacks in America
in a report dated October 29, 1947, entitled "To
Secure These Rights."
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1949 |
Rosa
and her husband Raymond work with Montgomery branch
of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP's) programs. Rosa Parks acts
as secretary and later a youth leader
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1954 |
May 17: U.S Supreme Court
rules that racial segregation in the public schools
of America was unconstitutional |
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1955 |
May 31: U.S. Supreme Court
orders desegregation of the public schools "with all
deliberate speed"
August: Rosa Parks meets Martin Luther King
August 28: Emmett Till, age 14, was tortured and
lynched in Money, Mississippi
November 25: The Interstate Commerce Commission
bans segregation in buses and all waiting rooms
involved in interstate travel
December 1: Rosa Parks is
arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give
her seat on the bus to a white passenger. She is
arrested, fingerprinted, jailed by police and fined
$14.
December 5: She stands trial and is found guilty of
breaking the segregation laws.
December 5: Martin Luther King becomes the president
of the Montgomery Improvement Association which was
organised due to protest against the incident
involving Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott
begins which will last 381 days.
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1956 |
January: Rosa Parks loses her job as a
seamstress at Montgomery Fair
December 21: The Montgomery buses are desegregated
and black passengers could legally take any seat on
the city's buses
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1957 |
1957:
Rosa Parks, her husband and mother move to Detroit
where she works as a seamstress
Rosa then leaves to work at Virginia University in
Hampton
January – The Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is formed to
form a strategy for ending segregation, and Martin
Luther King is elected president.
September 9: Congress of the United States passes
the Civil Rights Act of 1957
September 24/25: President Eisenhower sent in
federal troops to enforce integration of schools in
Little Rock. Nine black students were escorted into
the school by court order
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1958 |
September 20: Dr.
Martin Luther King is stabbed by a woman while
at a book signing in a department store in Harlem,
New York
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1959 |
Rosa
Parks returns to Detroit
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1960 |
May 6: President Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights
Act of 1960 into law |
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1961 |
May 4: An integrated group of 'Freedom Riders' left
Washington, DC on Greyhound buses, and, upon arrival
near Anniston, Alabama, the bus was burned, and the
riders were beaten
October 16: Martin Luther King meets with President
Kennedy to gain his support for the civil rights
movement.
December 16: Dr. King and other protesters are
arrested in Albany, Georgia
Rosa
Parks helps a friend open sewing factory on the
west-side of Detroit
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1962 |
September 30: Riots break out
on the campus at the University of Mississippi |
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1963 |
April 3: Birmingham, Alabama police chief, Eugene
"Bull" Connor, becomes a symbol of racism when he
broadcasts his methods of using dogs and fire hoses
to stop peaceful demonstrators of the Black protest
movement
June 11: Governor George Wallace stands in the door
of the University of Alabama, refusing the entrance
of Black students
June 12: Civil Rights Leader Medgar Evers was
assassinated in front of his home in Jackson,
Mississippi
August 28: Martin Luther King meets with President
John F. Kennedy and after their meeting Dr. King
delivers his famous
"I Have a Dream" speech
on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd
estimated at 250,000 at the Marched on Washington
for Jobs and Freedom. Rosa Parks is one of the many
in the crowd.
Rosa Parks speaks at the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC)
November 22: President John F. Kennedy is
assassinated
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1964 |
June 11: Martin Luther King is arrested in St.
Augustine, Florida for attempting to eat in a
white-only restaurant
July 2: Dr. King invited to the White House while
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Public
Accommodation and Fair Employment sections to the
Civil Rights Act of 1964
August 4: Three civil rights workers were killed on
a trip through Philadelphia, Mississippi. Their
names were James Chaney who was black and Andrew
Goodman and Michael Schwerner who were both white
Rosa Parks ecomes Deaconess in the AME Church in
Detroit (African Methodist Episcopal Church)
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1965 |
February 21: Malcolm X is
assassinated in New York City
March 7: The Edmund Pettus Bridge incident took
place in Selma, Alabama where marchers were beaten
and tear-gassed
March 17 – 25: King and 25,000 other protestors,
including Rosa Parks,
march from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights.
March 25: Mrs. Viola Liuzzo was killed driving some
of the black marchers back to Selma
August 6: The 1965 Voting Rights Act was signed into
law by President Lyndon B. Johnson
August 11/12: The Watts Riots erupted in California
when Thirty-five people died. The National Guard had
been called in to stop America's worst racial
disturbance.
Rosa Parks begins working for Congressman John
Conyers 1st District of Michigan in Detroit
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1966 |
January 13: Robert C. Weaver
becomes the first Black to serve in the cabinet as
Secretary of Housing and Urban Affairs
June 6: James Meredith was shot and wounded on the
"March Against Fear" from Memphis, Tennessee to
Jackson Mississippi
June 27: SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee) leader Stokely Carmichael publicly
uses the militant term, "Black Power" in Greenwood,
Mississippi,
July 18-23: The National Guard are called in when
Summer Riots break out in Chicago, Illinois,
Cleveland, Omaha, Nebraska and Ohio
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1967 |
May 1 -
October 1: Summer riots where 43 people are killed
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1968 |
April 4: While standing on the balcony of his room
at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee
Dr. Martin Luther King is shot and killed
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1977 |
1977:
Her husband, Raymond Parks, 74, dies of cancer.
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1979 |
1979
Rosa Parks receives NAACP's Spingarn Medal
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1980 |
1980:
The Detroit News and Detroit Public Schools
establish the Rosa Parks Scholarship Foundation,
honoring the 25th anniversary of her stand in
Montgomery
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1987 |
1987:
She founds the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for
Self Development with long time friend Elaine Eason
Steele which offers guidance to young blacks
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1988 |
1988:
Rosa Parks retires from Congressman John Conyers'
office. 1988
Retires from Conyers Detroit office
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1989 |
The
First Pathways to Freedom ride is started (an
historical education program)
A Bust of Rosa Parks unveiled at the Smithsonian
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1992 |
Rosa
publishes her first book, "Rosa Parks My Story" |
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1994 |
Rosa
Parks is assaulted and robbed of $53 in the home she
rents in Detroit. The robber is arrested and
convicted
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1995 |
Rosa
Parks speaks at the Million Man March in Washington
She is hospitalized after a fall in her apartment
The Rosa Parks Learning Center opens at Botsford
Commons, a senior community in Michigan where young
people mentor senior citizens on the use of
computers
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1996 |
Rosa
Parks receives the Medal of Freedom President Bill
Clinton
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1997 |
The
first Monday following February 4th is designated as
Rosa Parks Day in the State of Michigan |
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1998 |
April
21: The Rosa Parks Museum and Library is opened at
her arrest site in Montgomery, Alabama
September 2: The Rosa L. Parks Learning Center is
opened
Rosa Parks takes Pathways to Freedom ride to Nova
Scotia and receives an honorary degree from Mt.
Saint Vincent University
Rosa is inducted into the International Women's
Forum Hall of Fame
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1999 |
President Clinton awards Rosa the 250th
Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, the highest honor
a civilian can receive in the United States
Rosa Parks meets with the Pope in St. Louis and
reads a statement to the Pope asking for racial
healing.
May 2: Rosa Parks appeared in a TV episode of
Touched By An Angel
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2000 |
December 1: Opening of Rosa Parks Museum and Library
at Troy State University Montgomery, on the site
where she was arrested in 1955
September: Rosa attends an audience with the Queen
of Swaziland
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2001 |
April
30 -May 23: Filming of "The Rosa Parks Story" CBS
Television Movie |
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2002 |
February 24: Showing of: "The Rosa Parks Story" CBS
Television Movie |
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2003 |
October
29: Rosa Parks is honored with the International
Institute Heritage Hall of Fame Award
She is diagnosed with progressive dementia.
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2005 |
October
24: Rosa Parks dies on in her Detroit home
November 2: Rosa Parks' funeral service, seven hours
long, was held at the Greater Grace Temple Church. |
