On December 1 , 1955,Rosa Parkssolidified her place in the history script byrefusingto give up her motorcoach buttocks to a white-hot passenger — an arrestable offensive activity in then - segregated Montgomery , Alabama . That quiet act of rebelliousness help kick - start up the Civil Rights Movement and made Parks a home name . But it is n’t the only matter she should be remember for . Here are some fact deserving knowing about the ikon , who was born inTuskegee , Alabama , on February 4 , 1913 .
1. Rosa Parks finished high school at a time when that was rare.
Though Rosa Parksenjoyed school , she dropped out at age 16 to take care of her conk out granny . When she was 19 years old , Parks ’s husband , Raymond , root on her to nail her high school day education . She received her diploma in 1933 , make her part of the mere7 percentof Black Americans at the clock time to garner the eminence .
2. She was active in politics.
Parks ’s fight for equal right for Black Americans did n’t get going with her fatal taking into custody . In 1943 , she joined the Montgomery , Alabama , chapter of the NAACP and served as its secretarial assistant until1956 . Part of her duties included traveling across the land and interviewing victims of discrimination and witnesses to lynchings . After moving from Alabama to Detroit , Parks worked as an assistant to U.S. Representative John Conyers , where she help obtain housing for unhoused people .
3. The bus driver who had Parks arrested in 1955 had given her trouble before.
Parks ’s first conflict withJames Blake , the bus driver who reported her to the police force in 1955 , happen more than a decade earlier . In 1943 , she board a bus driven by Blake and , after she make up her fare , he told her to exit and re - put down through the back doors — a formula for dim rider using the segregated bus system . Instead of waiting for her to get back in , Blake drove aside once Parks was off the motorbus . She avoid the equipment driver for more than 10 years until one twenty-four hours she board his bus without devote tending . When she refuse to give up her seat to a white passenger , Blake was the one who called the police and had her arrested .
4. She helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.
Parks never planned to begin a movement , but that ’s what happened shortly after her arrest . civic rights groups used her tranquil protestation as an chance to beam a internal glare on unconstitutional segregation jurisprudence in the Deep South . The Montgomery bus boycott kick off just days after her halt , and less than a class later , the Supreme Court hold the city ’s segregate busesillegal . Parks ’s arrest and the heap boycott are viewed by many historians as the inciting events of the movement that led to Union polite rights legislation in the sixties .
5. Parks wasn’t the first Black woman who refused to give up her seat.
Just nine months before Parks madehistoryin Montgomery , a 15 - twelvemonth - old bring up Claudette Colvin was arrested in the same city for not motivate from her busbar rear for a blank passenger . Colvin was the first person require in detention for violate Montgomery ’s motorbus segregation Pentateuch , but her natural action were quickly overshadowed when Parks became the face of the Montgomery busbar boycott less than a class after .
6. Parks was arrested a second time.
Not long after her historic arrest in 1955 , Parks beget into trouble with the practice of law again onFebruary 22 , 1956 . This time , she was contain with near to 100 of her fellow protester for breaking sequestration laws during the Montgomery bus boycott . The famous photograph of Parks beingfingerprintedby a police officeholder come from this second arrest , though it ’s often mistakenly thought to show her first .
7. The founder of Little Caesars paid Rosa Parks’s rent for years.
After surviving a robbery and assault in her Detroit apartment in 1994 , Parks was in need of a new position to exist . Mike Ilitch , the founder of Little Caesars , heard of the architectural plan and offered to cover her split for as long as she needed it . He and his married woman Marian ended up paying for Parks to live in a safer apartment until her last in 2005 at the age of 92 .
8. Parks was the first woman lain in state at the U.S. Capitol.
