Life story
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was born on 4 February 1913 in the United States. She grew up in the American South under the weight of racial segregation, and the injustices of her early surroundings shaped the quiet resolve she carried into adulthood.
Parks became a civil rights activist. In 1955 she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in defiance of the Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation. Her refusal was an act of dignity rather than defiance for its own sake.
That single decision sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, a sustained protest that became a defining moment in the movement for civil rights. For her steadfastness she came to be known as the mother of the civil rights movement.
Rosa Parks died on 24 October 2005 in Detroit, where she rests at Woodlawn Cemetery. She is remembered for showing how one person's quiet courage can help change the conscience of a nation.
Životopisné údaje z verejných zdrojov. Portrét: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).
Constellation of Life
Important milestones that shaped their journey.