Rosa Parks was born in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4, 1913.  She went to live with her mother and brother on her grandmother’s farm in Pine Level, Alabama when  her mother and father separated.  Here, Rosa attended an African American school in a one-room schoolhouse.  Her school only lasted 5 months a year and only went up to the 6th grade so at age 11 she was sent to Montgomery to continue school.  After 5 years she left school and returned home to take care of her sick grandmother.

In 1932 Rosa married Raymond Parks who was a barber in Montgomery and they were happily married for many years.  Raymond was in the NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and Rosa soon became interested and active in it.  She became the secretary of the NAACP in 1943. 

Rosa lived in a time where blacks and whites were separated from each other.  This was called segregation.  On buses black people were supposed to sit in the back in a ‘blacks only’ section, but if a white person needed a seat and there were no more seats in the ‘white only’ section, blacks would have to give up their seat and stand.  On December 1, 1953, in Montgomery Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white man and was taken to court and fined ten dollars.  This was not the first time an African American had refused to give up a bus seat, but this time was different because Martin Luther King Jr., a well known leader in the civil rights movement, had heard about Rosa’s bravery and arranged a boycott of all Montgomery buses in support of her actions.  After Rosa refused to give up her seat, she and Raymond both lost their jobs.  They were to face many hard years until the Supreme Court stepped in and declared segregation unconstitutional.  Rosa Parks from this point on was known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.” 

Years later Rosa Parks was still in the hearts and minds of many people.  In 1979 Rosa was given the Spingarn Medal for Civil Rights Work and in 1996 she won the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

Rosa lived the last part of her life in Detroit, Michigan with her husband, and on October 24, 2005 , at the age of 92, Rosa died of natural causes.

Sources

1)  http://afroamhistory.about.com/ad/rosaparks/p/bio_parks_r.html
2)  http://www.wikipedia.com
3)  http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia
4)  http://www.2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=4809
5)  http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmheroes1.html