ROSA PARKS
Oil, 1970, 35 x 28 inches
Rosa Parks, seamstress
and symbol, was born in Tuskegee in 1913 as Rosa McCauley, and
attended Alabama State College. She married Raymond Parks in 1932,
and was active in the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, serving
as secretary and youth adviser from 1943 to 1956. She came to
the notice of the world when in 1955 she refused to yield her
seat in the white section on a Montgomery bus. She was promptly
arrested, and this led to a boycott of the city bus system organized
by two local ministers, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ralph Abernathy.
Their newly organized Montgomery Improvement Association oversaw
the year-long boycott that ended segregation in the bus system.
Since that time she has gained many honors including the Springarn
Medal of the NAACP in 1979, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Award,
the Service Award of Ebony, and the Martin Luther King, Jr., Nonviolent
Peace Prize. She has ten honorary degrees including one awarded
by Shaw College in Detroit, where she has worked as secretary
and receptionist in the office of Congressman John J. Conyers,
Jr.
Part of the citation for her Mount Holyoke degree reads, 'When
you led, you had no way of knowing if anyone would follow."
In 1984, she received the Eleanor Roosevelt Woman of Courage Award.
In 1990 her seventy-seventh birthday was held at the Kennedy Center
with three thousand black leaders, government officials, and others
celebrating her life.
For more information about Rosa
Parks, visit Grandtimes.com.
