# Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement, best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement".
Parks became an NAACP activist in 1943, participating in several high-profile civil rights campaigns. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake's order to vacate a row of four seats in the "colored" section in favor of a white female passenger who had complained to the driver, once the "white" section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation, but the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) believed that she was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws, and she helped inspire the black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year. The case became bogged down in the state courts, but the federal Montgomery bus lawsuit Browder v. Gayle resulted in a November 1956 decision that bus segregation is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Parks's act of defiance and the Montgomery bus boycott became important symbols of the movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation, and organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr. At the time, Parks was employed as a seamstress at a local department store and was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for training activists for workers' rights and racial equality. Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job and received death threats for years afterwards. Shortly after the boycott, she moved to Detroit, where she briefly found similar work. From 1965 to 1988, she served as secretary and receptionist to John Conyers, an African-American US Representative. She was also active in the black power movement and the support of political prisoners in the US.
After retirement, Parks wrote her autobiography and continued to insist that there was more work to be done in the struggle for justice. She received national recognition, including the NAACP's 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. California and Missouri commemorate Rosa Parks Day on her birthday, February 4, while Ohio, Oregon, and Texas commemorate the anniversary of her arrest, December 1.

## Early life

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. Her mother, Leona (née Edwards), was a teacher from Pine Level, Alabama. Her father, James McCauley, was a carpenter and mason from Abbeville, Alabama. Her name was a portmanteau of her maternal and paternal grandmothers' names: Rose and Louisa. In addition to her African ancestry, one of her great-grandfathers was of Scotch-Irish descent, and one of her great-grandmothers was of partial Native American ancestry. Her maternal grandfather, Sylvester Edwards, was born as a result of the rape of an enslaved woman by a plantation owner's son.
As an infant, Parks moved with her mother to her grandparents' farm outside Pine Level, where her younger brother Sylvester was born. To supplement the family's income, she worked on the plantation of Moses Hudson, who paid Black children 50 cents a day to pick cotton. Parks also learned quilting and sewing from her mother, completing her first quilt at age ten and her first dress at eleven. She attended the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, a century-old independent Black denomination founded by free Blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early nineteenth century. Baptized at age two, she remained a member of the church throughout her life.
Alabama and other southern states began implementing segregationist policies during the 1870s and 1880s, culminating in a 1901 constitutional convention that formally codified Jim Crow segregation into law. This system enforced racial separation in nearly all aspects of life, including financial institutions, healthcare, religious facilities, burial grounds, and public transportation. Acts of racist violence were also widespread, with the Ku Klux Klan intensifying its activity in Pine Level after the end of World War I. Parks later recalled that she "heard of a lot of black people being found dead" under mysterious circumstances during her childhood.
Parks initially attended school in a one-room schoolhouse at the local Mount Zion AME church. Because she suffered from chronic tonsilitis, she often missed school during the academic year, causing her mother to enroll her in summer school. When she was nine, she received a tonsillectomy from a doctor in Montgomery, Alabama, which improved her health. When she was eleven or twelve, she began attending the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, where she received vocational training. After the school closed in 1928, she transferred to Booker T. Washington Junior High School. She then attended a laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes, but dropped out to care for her ailing grandmother and mother.
After dropping out of school, Parks worked on her family's farm and as a domestic worker in white households. Black women in Alabama who worked as domestic workers often experienced sexual violence, as exemplified by the rape of Murdus Dixon, a 12-year-old girl who was threatened at knifepoint and raped in Birmingham, Alabama. During the 1950s or 60s, Parks wrote an account of an incident where a white man named "Mr. Charlie" attempted to sexually assault her. In her account, she verbally resists Mr. Charlie's advances and denounces his racism. The account concludes with her attempting to read a newspaper while ignoring him. While the account may have been partially or entirely fictionalized, biographer Jeanne Theoharis notes that many of the elements of the account "correspond to Parks's life", speculating that Parks "wrote [the account] as an allegory to suggest larger themes of domination and resistance", or that, "given that more than twenty-five years had passed before she wrote [the account] down, she augmented what she said to Charlie that evening with all the points that she had wished to make as she resisted his advances".
In 1931, Rosa was introduced to her future husband, Raymond Parks, by a mutual friend. She was initially "[not] very interested in him" because of "some unhappy romantic experiences" and because of his light skin. However, Raymond eventually persuaded Rosa to ride with him in his car. At the time, automobile ownership was rare among Black men in Alabama. Rosa described Raymond as the "first real activist" she had met, admiring his opposition to racial prejudice. The two married on December 18, 1932, at Rosa's mother's house.

### Early activism

Following their marriage, Raymond and Rosa became involved in the Scottsboro Boys case, concerning a group of nine Black boys who were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in Paint Rock, Alabama. The Scottsboro Boys faced trial in Scottsboro, Alabama, where they were sentenced to death by electrocution. To raise support for their defense, Rosa and Raymond hosted fundraising meetings and gatherings for Scottsboro legal defenders at their Montgomery residence. According to historian Robin Kelley, the couple also attended meetings of the Communist Party USA, who helped bring attention to the Scottsboro Boys case. The Supreme Court of the United States ultimately overturned the Scottsboro Boys' convictions in Powell v. Alabama, citing insufficient legal representation. They were released in 1950.
In 1933, Rosa completed her high school education with encouragement from Raymond. At the time in Alabama, only 7% of Black people held a high school diploma. Subsequently, she worked as a nurse's aide at St. Margaret's Hospital, sewing to supplement her income. In 1941, she began working at Maxwell Air Force Base, a training facility for air force cadets. The base was fully integrated, and Parks was able to take public transit alongside her white coworkers on-base. However, when she returned home, she was required to use segregated buses, which frustrated her. According to Parks, her time at Maxwell "opened her eyes up", providing an "alternative reality to the ugly racial policies of Jim Crow".
Parks began attending meetings of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943 after seeing a picture of a former classmate of hers, Johnnie Carr, at a meeting. In December 1943, was elected secretary of the chapter. Parks later explained that she accepted the role, considered a woman's position at the time, because "[she] was the only woman there, and they needed a secretary, and [she] was too timid to say no". She and Raymond were also members of the Voter's League, a local organization focused on increasing Black voter registration. There were numerous obstacles preventing Black people from registering to vote in Alabama during this period, including poll taxes, literacy tests, intrusive questions on voter registration applications, and retaliation by employers. As of 1940, less than 0.1% of Black Montgomerians were registered to vote. Encouraged by NAACP activist E. D. Nixon, Parks attempted to register three times beginning in 1943, finally succeeding in 1945.
In her capacity as secretary, Parks began investigating the gang rape of Recy Taylor, a Black woman from Abbeville, in 1944. After a grand jury failed to indict the perpetrators, Parks and other civil rights activists organized "The Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor", launching "the strongest campaign for equal justice to be seen in a decade", according to The Chicago Defender. The campaign, which received nationwide attention, put pressure on Governor Chauncey Sparks to take steps to prosecute Taylor's assailants. Sparks ultimately promised to investigate the case. However, the state failed to secure indictments for the assailants after a second grand jury hearing in 1945. Despite this, historian Danielle L. McGuire describes the movement for justice in the Recy Taylor case as "the largest and best organized of many efforts to draw attention to the ruthless heart of the racial caste system", claiming that it "brought the building blocks of the Montgomery bus boycott together a decade earlier and kept them in place until it became Rosa Parks's turn to testify". Parks also organized support for Jeremiah Reeves, who was accused of raping a white woman in 1952. Reeves was ultimately executed in 1957.
Beginning in 1954, Parks began working as a seamstress for Clifford and Virginia Durr, a white couple. Politically liberal and opposed to segregation, the Durrs became her friends. They encouraged, and eventually helped sponsor, Parks to attend the Highlanender Folk School, an activist training center in Monteagle, Tennessee, in the summer of 1955. There, Parks was mentored by the veteran organizer Septima Clark. Parks later reflected that her experience at Highlander provided her with a vision of a unified, integrated society, marking the first time in her adult life that she witnessed "people of all races and backgrounds" interacting harmoniously. Later, in August 1955, she attended a Montgomery meeting concerning the lynching of Emmett Till. According to Theoharis, Parks was "heartened by the attention that people managed to get to the [Till] case", since the custom was to "keep things covered up".

## Arrest and bus boycott
### Montgomery buses: law and prevailing customs

Montgomery passed a city ordinance segregating bus passengers by race in 1900, before statewide segregation was implemented. Montgomery's Black residents conducted boycotts against segregated streetcars between 1900 and 1902, coinciding with similar boycotts and protests in other southern cities. The boycotts resulted in an amendment to the city ordinance, which stipulated that "no rider had to surrender a seat unless another was available". However, many drivers failed to follow the ordinance. Altercations between bus drivers and Black passengers were frequent. According to historian Cheryl Phibbs, "bus drivers were given policeman-like authority to determine where racial divisions were enforced". They were also generally armed.
Black people constituted a majority of bus riders in Montgomery. According to the Women's Political Council, a Montgomery-based advocacy group, "three-fourths of the riders" on Montgomery buses were Black. Despite this, the first ten rows on each Montgomery bus were reserved for white passengers, while the last ten rows were designated for Black passengers. Segregation in the middle rows was enforced at the driver's discretion. While city ordinances did not require patrons to give up their seats, bus drivers frequently demanded Black passengers relinquish their seats to accommodate white riders. Furthermore, Black passengers were sometimes required to pay their fares at the front of the bus, then exit and re-board through the back door.
In 1943, bus driver James F. Blake confronted Parks when she tried to take her seat from the front of the bus, insisting that she re-board in the back. Parks refused, telling Blake that she was "already on the bus and didn't see the need of getting off and getting back on when people were standing in the stepwell". After Blake grasped her sleeve, Parks moved to the front of the bus, sitting in the one of the rows reserved for white passengers, where she dropped her purse. Blake told her to "get off [his] bus", appearing poised to assault her. Parks admonished Blake, saying that he "better not hit [her]". She then exited the bus without re-boarding. Following this encounter, she typically avoided riding on Blake's bus.

### Refusal to move

Before December 1955, several people were arrested for declining to give up their seats on Montgomery buses. Maxwell Air Force Base employee Viola White was arrested in 1944 and Mary Wingfield was arrested in 1949. Teenager Mary Louise Smith was arrested in October 1954. In March 1955, Claudette Colvin, a fifteen-year-old student at Booker T. Washington Magnet High School, was also arrested. Additional arrests included Aurelia Browder on April 29, 1955, and Susie McDonald on October 21, 1955. Smith, Colvin, Browder, and McDonald were the plaintiffs in the 1956 lawsuit Browder v. Gayle. Black activists, including members of the WPC and NAACP, considered Smith and Colvin as test cases for a community bus boycott, but ultimately determined that they were not suitable candidates.
At 5:00 p.m. on December 1, 1955, Parks left work and purchased several items from Lee’s Cut-Rate Drug before walking to Court Square to wait for her bus. She boarded the bus at around 5:30. Lost in thought, she did not notice that the James F. Blake was the driver. Parks later stated that if she had noticed Blake, she would not have boarded. She paid her fare and went to sit in the middle section of the bus, next to a Black man and across from two Black women. Her chronic bursitis was causing her significant discomfort, particularly in her shoulders.
As the bus traveled along its regular route, all of the white-only seats in the bus filled up. The bus reached the third stop in front of the Empire Theater, and several white passengers boarded. One white man was forced to stand. Blake then demanded that Black passengers in the middle row yield their seats. While those seated near Parks complied, Parks remained seated. According to Parks:
   I felt that, if I did stand up, it meant that I approved of the way I was being treated, and I did not approve.
When Blake inquired if she intended to stand, Parks refused. Blake threatened her with arrest, to which Parks responded, "you may do that." She considered physically resisting, but decided against it, as she "didn’t have any way of fighting back". Blake then called his supervisor, who advised him to call the police. Two officers arrived on the scene, and, at the insistence of Blake, arrested Parks for violating the Montgomery municipal code.
According to biographer Douglas G. Brinkley, Parks's refusal to move was not premeditated. Parks's former classmate, Mary Fair Burks, also clarified that Parks was not acting on behalf of the NAACP, as she "would have done so openly and demanded a group action on the part of the organization". Parks said of her refusal to move:
   People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
After her arrest, Parks was taken to Montgomery city hall, where she filled out her arrest forms. She was then taken to the city jail, where she was fingerprinted and had photographed. After repeated requests, she was granted permission to call home, notifying her mother of her arrest and asking for Raymond to come. E. D. Nixon was also informed of Parks's arrest by his wife, who had heard about the arrest from a friend, who had learned about it from a bus passenger. Nixon drove down to the jail with Clifford and Virginia Durr and paid Parks's bail.

### Montgomery bus boycott

After Parks's arrest, Nixon conferred with Clifford about the possibility of adopting Parks's arrest as a test case. The two favored Parks because of her high standing in the Black community, her respectable manners, and her "firm quiet spirit", which, according to Durr, "would be needed for the long battle ahead". After being approached by Nixon to be a test case, Parks consulted with her family. Despite concerns about potential violent retaliation, she ultimately consented. Attorney Fred Gray agreed to represent Parks in court, and WPC President Jo Ann Robinson was notified of the case. The WPC began planning for a one-day boycott of Montgomery buses on December 5, 1955, the day of Parks's trial. Under the guise of grading exams, Robinson collaborated with two students at Alabama State College to produce 35,000 leaflets announcing the boycott using a mimeograph provided by the college's business chair, John Cannon.
WPC members distributed the leaflets throughout the Black community, and Nixon enlisted the support of local Black clergy, including the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Martin Luther King Jr. A planning meeting including members of the Black clergy was held at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church on December 2. While about half of the clergy in attendance left the meeting partway through, not wanting to be associated with politics, half stayed, and plans were drafted for alternative transportation during the boycott, including carpooling networks and collaboration with local taxi drivers. More leaflets were created at the meeting, and in the following days, were distributed by King and pastor Ralph Abernathy at bars and clubs. In addition, many Black pastors announced the boycott in their churches on Sunday December 4. Extensive media coverage in the Montgomery Advertiser and on local television and radio stations further publicized the boycott.
Despite attempts by Montgomery police officers to organize escorts for Black passengers, who they thought might fear retaliation from the Black community, bus ridership was low on the day of Parks's trial. Many Black residents walked or carpooled. The trial took place in the courtroom at Montgomery city hall, with almost 500 Black Montgomerians attending. Parks pleaded "not guilty," and while she did not testify, two witnesses corroborated that open seats were available when she refused to move. The prosecution moved to charge Parks on state charges rather than municipal charges. The presiding judge permitted the change, and Parks was found guilty of violating state law. She was fined $10, plus $4 in court fees (equivalent to $164 in 2024). The trial took between five and 30 minutes. Gray immediately filed to appeal the ruling, while Nixon addressed the crowd assembled outside, urging them to remain nonviolent and vacate city hall.
While Parks handled telephone communications at Gray's office, boycott organizers gathered at Mount Zion AME Zion Church that afternoon to discuss prolonging the boycott and plan a mass meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church scheduled for that evening. They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to oversee the boycott, electing King as leader. 15,000 people attended the evening meeting. Nixon and King both gave speeches, while Abernathy read the demands of the organizers to the crowd, asking them to stand if they supported a continued boycott:
   * Courteous treatment on the buses;
   * First-come, first-served seating with whites in front and blacks in back;
   * Hiring of black drivers for the black bus routes.
The crowd overwhelmingly supported continuing the boycott. Parks, hailed by King as a "heroine", asked if she should address the crowd, who repeatedly encouraged her to speak. However, she was told by "someone" that she had "said enough" and did not speak that evening. The decision to not have Parks speak has been interpreted by some as reflecting gender inequality within the civil rights movement. According to Theoharis:
   As with the treatment of other women in the movement, Parks was lauded by the crowd as their heroine but not consulted for her vision of the struggle and subsequent political strategy. If she had gotten to speak, Parks might have connected the injustice on the bus to the travesties of Scottsboro, the brutal rapes of Recy Taylor and Gertrude Perkins, the murder of Emmett Till, and the impending legal lynching of Jeremiah Reeves... She might have talked about the loneliness of her stand on Thursday and the power of walking together on Monday. She might have thanked them for turning her individual refusal into a collective protest. She might have said that this movement was a long time in coalescing, but what a joyful and holy day it was now that it had come.
At a December 6 press conference, King declared that the boycott would continue until all demands had been satisfied. However, at a meeting on December 8, city and bus company officials dismissed MIA's demands. The MIA began developing a parallel transportation network for Black Montgomerians to support the boycott. Parks served temporarily as a dispatcher, coordinating transportation within the MIA's ride-sharing system. She was ostracized by her coworkers at Montgomery Fair, where she worked as a seamstress. In January 1956, she was terminated. A week later, Raymond was also terminated from his job at Maxwell Air Force Base. That same month, Montgomery Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers initiated a "Get Tough" policy, harassing Black pedestrians and boycott participants. Boycott organizers, including Parks, received regular death threats. In February, a state grand jury declared the boycott illegal, leading to the arrest of 115 boycott leaders, including Parks. However, ultimately only King was tried. The boycott continued.
Responding to a plan by city officials to stall Parks's case in state circuit courts, Gray filed suit in federal court. While Parks was initially included as a plaintiff in this case, she was eventually removed to avoid federal dismissal on the grounds that her case was already being heard in Alabama's state court. In the end, the case was brought before the Supreme Court as Browder v. Gayle, which ruled the statute mandating dsegregation of Montgomery buses unconstitutional. Later, before a district court, the Supreme Court's ruling was upheld. After rejecting appeals by the city of Montgomery and state of Alabama, the Supreme Court order the integration of Montgomey's buses on December 20, 1956. King called off the boycott that day, after 381 days of it being in effect.

## Later years
### Late 1950s

After being terminated from their jobs, Rosa and Raymond faced significant financial hardship, particularly after their landlord implemented a monthly rent increase of $10. In February 1956, King issued a memorandum requesting a $250-$300 disbursement for Parks from the MIA relief fund. The funds were authorized. However, Parks continued to struggle. She developed severe health problems, including chronic insomnia, stomach ulcers, and a heart condition. Despite this, she traveled throughout the year, including to Detroit, Michigan in March. While there, she visited her brother and addressed United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 600, in a departure from the mainstream NAACP, who opposed trade union affiliations.
In 1957, after the end of the boycott, Virginia Durr offered her a position at Highlander in hopes of organizing a Black voter registration campaign in Montgomery. Parks declined, citing the school's location in Tennessee and concerns about potential reprisals if she were to speak in Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana. She also disagreed with King and the emerging Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) regarding their impending airport desegregation campaign. Tensions between King and Nixon caused a rift in the MIA, with Parks taking Nixon's side. However, tensions developed between Nixon and Parks as well, and her health further deteriorated. In August 1957, prompted by economic insecurity, threats to her safety, and divions within the MIA leadership, she left Montgomery for Detroit, where her brother, Sylvester, and her cousins, Thomas Williamson and Annie Cruse, lived. The MIA, embarassed by her decision to move, raised $500 for her as a "going-away present".
Upon arriving in Detroit, Rosa, Raymond, and Rosa's mother initially lived with Rosa's cousin before renting an apartment on Euclid Avenue. For a brief period beginning in October 1957, Parks moved to Hampton, Virginia to work at a Holly Tree Inn as a hostess. She returned to Detroit in December. She and her family continued to struggle financially. They lost their apartment in 1959 and moved into a meeting hall for the Progressive Civic League (PCL), a local Black professional organization. Rosa managed the treasury at the PCL's credit union while Raymond served as the meeting hall's caretaker.

### 1960s

In early 1960, Parks's health deteriorated, necessitating multiple surgeries. She and her family incurred significant debt due to unpaid medical bills. She received donations from the MIA and PCL, and the Black press began to write about her financial difficulties. In 1961, after her health improved and she found employment at Stockton Sewing Company, the family moved to Detroit's Virginia Park neighborhood. Raymond also secured employment at a local barber shop.
Throughout the 1960s, Parks remained active in the civil rights movement. She was an honorary member of the SCLC, and periodically attended meetings, including the 1962 SCLC convention in Birmingham. In August 1963, she traveled to Washington, D.C. to take part in the March on Washington. Over 250,000 people participated in the march, and Parks was honored alongside other prominent women in the civil rights struggle during the event's "Tribute to Women" segment. The march has been criticized for its lack of women's representation, with no women being included in the delegation that was sent to meet with the Kennedy administration. Parks said of the event that it was "a great occasion, but women were not allowed to play much of a role".
Parks played a critical role in John Conyers's 1964 congressional campaign. She persuaded King, who was generally reluctant to endorse local candidates, to appear with Conyers, boosting the novice candidate's profile. When Conyers was elected, he hired her as a secretary and receptionist for his congressional office in Detroit. As part of her position, Parks engaged with Conyers's constituents, focusing on addressing socio-economic challenges such as welfare, education, job discrimination, and affordable housing. Through regular visits to schools, hospitals, senior citizen facilities, and community gatherings, she ensured Conyers remained connected to grassroots concerns. Conyers later recalled of Parks that "you treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene—just a very special person".
Parks attended the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, joined the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, and supported the Freedom Now Party. She was an admirer of Nation of Islam spokesman Malcolm X and "armed self defense" advocate Robert F. Williams, befriending Williams after his return from China, where he had been invited to visit by Chairman Mao Zedong. In a 1967 interview, she said that she "[did not] believe in gradualism or that whatever should be done for the better should take forever to do". In the wake of the 1967 Detroit riot, Parks spoke in support of rioters, comparing the "burning and looting" of the riot with her own actions during the Montgomery bus boycott. Later, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, she attended protests as part of the Memphis sanitation strike. She also took part in the Black power movement, attending the Philadelphia Black power conference in 1968.

### 1970s

Parks continued to support the Black power movement throughout the 1970s, attending the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana in 1972. She also advocated for political prisoners, playing a key role in the establishment of the Detroit chapter of the Joanne Little Defense Committee. Little, who was incarcerated, was charged with killing her jailer, Clarence Alligood, while he was sexually assaulting her. Following national outcry around her case, Little was acquitted in July 1975. Parks also organized on behalf of Gary Tyler, who was wrongfully convicted of shooting of a 13-year-old white boy while being attacked by a group of white segregationists. Tyler was ultimately freed in 2016, after 41 years in prison. Additionally, Parks advocated for the Wilmington 10 and RNA 11 and spoke in support of Angela Davis, introducing her to a crowd of 12,000 as a "dear sister who has endured significant persecution" following Davis's acquittal in the kidnapping and murder case of Judge Harold Haley.
Parks continued to experience health problems throughout the 1970s, and was injured several times after falling on ice. She also experienced personal losses, with Raymond dying of throat cancer in 1977 and her brother Sylvester dying of stomach cancer soon after. These personal struggles caused her to become removed from the civil rights movement. She learned of the death of Fannie Lou Hamer, once a close friend, from a newspaper, lamenting that Hamer was "dead quite before [she] knew of it", and that "no one mentioned it to [her]". Without support from her husband and unable to afford a nurse, Parks relocated her elderly mother, first to a retirement facility, then to a senior living apartment, where they lived together until her mother's death in 1979.
During the 1979/1980 academic year, Parks visited the Black Panther school in Oakland, California. As part of her visit, she attended a student play dramatizing her refusal to move in 1955, staying after to answer the students' questions. According to the school's director, Ericka Huggins, Parks "loved" the visit, praising the school's instructors and the Black Panther Party for their work. Huggins later said of Parks's visit:
   I consider Rosa Parks a radical woman, a revolutionary woman, showing up in real time at an elementary school run by the Black Panther Party.

### 1980s

During the 1980s, Parks continued to take part in various social and political causes. In 1981, she wrote to attorney Chokwe Lumumba in support of arrested activists from the Black Liberation Army, the May 19th Communist Organization, the RNA, and Weather Underground. She also participated in the Free South Africa Movement, which opposed Apartheid in South Africa. Working with the movement, Parks participated in anti-apartheid demonstrations in Washington, D.C. and Berkeley, California, and in the National Conference Against Apartheid, which took place at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. She supported Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns. Speaking on his behalf at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, Parks said:
   At some point we should step aside and let the younger ones take over. But we first must take care of our young people to make sure that they have the rights of first-class citizens... And when we see so little done by so many, we just will not give up.
Parks also worked extensively with radio host and NAACP activist Joe Madison during the 1980s. After a proposed ordinance that would ban non-residents from using parks in Dearborn, Michigan, which Madison believed would lead to racial discrimination, she and Madison planned a city-wide boycott. The ordinance was ultimately overturned by a Wayne County Circuit Judge, who ruled that it was racially discriminatory. Madison and Parks also unsuccessfully ran for president and vice president of the NAACP's Detroit chapter in 1985.
In 1987, Parks co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development with Elaine Eason Steele. The purpose of the institute, which was influenced by Parks's experiences at Montgomery Industrial School for Girls and Highlander, is to develop youth leaders' capabilities in advancing civil rights initiatives. The institute also offers "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours, which introduce young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country. Parks also served on the Board of Advocates for Planned Parenthood. Unrelated to her activism, she also donated several quilts made by members of her family to the Detroit Historical Museum.

### 1990s

In 1992, Parks published Rosa Parks: My Story, an autobiography aimed at younger readers, which recounts her life leading to her decision to keep her seat on the bus. A few years later, she published Quiet Strength (1995), her memoir, which focuses on her faith.
At age 81, Parks was robbed and assaulted in her home in central Detroit on August 30, 1994. The assailant, Joseph Skipper, broke down the door but claimed he had chased away an intruder. He requested a reward and when Parks paid him, he demanded more. Parks refused and he attacked her. Hurt and badly shaken, Parks called a friend, who called the police. A neighborhood manhunt led to Skipper's capture and reported beating. Parks was treated at Detroit Receiving Hospital for facial injuries and swelling on the right side of her face. Parks said about the attack on her by the African-American man, "Many gains have been made ... But as you can see, at this time we still have a long way to go." Skipper was sentenced to 8 to 15 years and was transferred to prison in another state for his own safety.
Suffering anxiety upon returning to her small central Detroit house following the ordeal, Parks moved into Riverfront Towers, a secure high-rise apartment building. Learning of Parks's move, Little Caesars owner Mike Ilitch offered to pay for her housing expenses for as long as necessary.
In 1994, the Ku Klux Klan applied to sponsor a portion of United States Interstate 55 in St. Louis County and Jefferson County, Missouri, near St. Louis, for cleanup (which allowed them to have signs stating that this section of highway was maintained by the organization). Since the state could not refuse the KKK's sponsorship, the Missouri legislature voted to name the highway section the "Rosa Parks Highway". When asked how she felt about this honor, she is reported to have commented, "It is always nice to be thought of."
In 1999, Parks filmed a cameo appearance for the television series Touched by an Angel. It was her last appearance on screen; Parks began to suffer from health problems due to old age.

### 2000s

In 2002, Parks received an eviction notice from her $1,800 per month (equivalent to $3,100 in 2024) apartment for non-payment of rent. Parks was incapable of managing her own financial affairs by this time due to age-related physical and mental decline. Her rent was paid from a collection taken by Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit. When her rent became delinquent and her impending eviction was highly publicized in 2004, executives of the ownership company announced they had forgiven the back rent and would allow Parks, by then 91 and in extremely poor health, to live rent-free in the building for the remainder of her life. Elaine Steele, manager of the nonprofit Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute, defended Parks's care and stated that the eviction notices were sent in error. Several of Parks's family members alleged that her financial affairs had been mismanaged.
In 2016, Parks's former residence in Detroit was threatened with demolition. A Berlin-based American artist, Ryan Mendoza, arranged to have the house disassembled, moved to his garden in Germany, and partly restored. It served as a museum honoring Rosa Parks. In 2018, the house was moved back to the United States. Brown University was planning to exhibit the house, but the display was cancelled. The house was exhibited during part of 2018 in an arts centre in Providence, Rhode Island.

## Death and funeral

Parks died of natural causes on October 24, 2005, at the age of 92, in her apartment on the east side of Detroit. She and her husband never had children and she outlived her only sibling. She was survived by her sister-in-law (Raymond's sister), 13 nieces and nephews and their families, and several cousins, most of them residents of Michigan or Alabama.
* Body of Rosa Parks to lie in honor at U.S. Capitol
City officials in Montgomery and Detroit announced on October 27, 2005, that the front seats of their city buses would be reserved with black ribbons in honor of Parks until her funeral. Parks' coffin was flown to Montgomery and taken in a horse-drawn hearse to the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, where she lay in repose at the altar on October 29, 2005, dressed in the uniform of a church deaconess. A memorial service was held there the following morning. One of the speakers, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said that if it had not been for Parks, she would probably have never become the Secretary of State. In the evening the casket was transported to Washington, D.C., and transported by a bus similar to the one in which she made her protest, to lie in honor in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.
Parks was the 31st person, the first American who had not been a U.S. government official, and the second private person (after the French planner Pierre L'Enfant) to be honored in this way. She was the first woman and the second black person to lie in honor in the Capitol. An estimated 50,000 people viewed the casket there, and the event was broadcast on television on October 31, 2005. A memorial service was held that afternoon at Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, D.C.
With her body and casket returned to Detroit, for two days, Parks lay in repose at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. Her funeral service was seven hours long and was held on November 2, 2005, at the Greater Grace Temple Church in Detroit. After the service, an honor guard from the Michigan National Guard draped the U.S. flag over the casket and carried it to a horse-drawn hearse, which was intended to carry it, in daylight, to the cemetery. As the hearse passed the thousands of people who were viewing the procession, many clapped, cheered loudly and released white balloons. Parks was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery in the chapel's mausoleum. The chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel in her honor.

## Legacy and honors

* 1963: Inspired by the Montgomery boycott, Paul Stephenson initiated a bus boycott in Bristol, England, to protest against the refusal of a local bus company to employ black and Asian drivers and conductors.
* 1976: Detroit renamed 12th Street "Rosa Parks Boulevard".
* 1979: The NAACP awarded Parks the Spingarn Medal, its highest honor,
* 1980: She received the Martin Luther King Jr. Award.
* 1982: California State University, Fresno, awarded Parks the African-American Achievement Award. The honor, given to deserving students in succeeding years, became the Rosa Parks Awards.
* 1983: She was inducted into Michigan Women's Hall of Fame for her achievements in civil rights.
* 1984: She received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 black Women.
* 1990:
** Parks was invited to be part of the group welcoming Nelson Mandela upon his release from prison in South Africa.
** Parks was in attendance as part of Interstate 475 outside of Toledo, Ohio, was named after her.
* 1992: She received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award along with Dr. Benjamin Spock and others at the Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.
* 1993: She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame,
* 1994: She received an honorary doctorate from Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL.
* 1994: She received an honorary doctorate from Soka University in Tokyo, Japan.
* 1995: She received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award in Williamsburg, Virginia.
* 1996: She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the US executive branch.
* 1998: She was the first-ever recipient of the International Freedom Conductor Award from the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, honoring people whose actions support those struggling with modern-day issues related to freedom.
* 1999:
** She received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the US legislative branch, the medal bears the legend "Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement"
** Time named Parks one of the 20 most influential and iconic figures of the 20th century.
** President Bill Clinton honored her in his State of the Union address, saying: "She's sitting down with the first lady tonight, and she may get up or not as she chooses."
* 2000:
** Her home state awarded her the Alabama Academy of Honor,
** She received the first Governor's Medal of Honor for Extraordinary Courage.
** She was awarded two dozen honorary doctorates from universities worldwide
** She was made an honorary member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
** the Rosa Parks Library and Museum on the campus of Troy University in Montgomery was dedicated to her.
* 2002:
** Scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Parks on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
** A portion of the Interstate 10 freeway in Los Angeles was named in her honor.
** She received the Walter P. Reuther Humanitarian Award from Wayne State University.
* 2003: Bus No. 2857, on which Parks was riding, was restored and placed on display in The Henry Ford museum
* 2004: In the Los Angeles County MetroRail system, the Imperial Highway/Wilmington station, where the A Line connects with the C Line, has been officially named the "Rosa Parks Station".
* 2005:
** Senate Concurrent Resolution 61, 109th Congress, 1st Session, was agreed to October 29, 2005. This set the stage for her to become the 1st woman to lie in honor, in the Capitol Rotunda.
** On October 30, 2005, President George W. Bush issued a proclamation ordering that all flags on U.S. public areas both within the country and abroad be flown at half-staff on the day of Parks's funeral.
** Metro Transit in King County, Washington, placed posters and stickers dedicating the first forward-facing seat of all its buses in Parks's memory shortly after her death,
** The American Public Transportation Association declared December 1, 2005, the 50th anniversary of her arrest, to be a "National Transit Tribute to Rosa Parks Day".
** On that anniversary, President George W. Bush signed Pub. L. 109–116 (text) (PDF), directing that a statue of Parks be placed in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. In signing the resolution directing the Joint Commission on the Library to do so, the President stated:
    By placing her statue in the heart of the nation's Capitol, we commemorate her work for a more perfect union, and we commit ourselves to continue to struggle for justice for every American.
   * Portion of Interstate 96 in Detroit was renamed by the state legislature as the Rosa Parks Memorial Highway in December 2005.
* 2006:
** At Super Bowl XL, played at Detroit's Ford Field, long-time Detroit residents Coretta Scott King and Parks were remembered and honored by a moment of silence. The Super Bowl was dedicated to their memory. Parks's nieces and nephews and Martin Luther King III joined the coin toss ceremonies, standing alongside former University of Michigan star Tom Brady who flipped the coin.
** On February 14, the County Executive of Nassau County, New York, Tom Suozzi, announced that the Hempstead Transit Center would be renamed the Rosa Parks Hempstead Transit Center in her honor.
** On October 27, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell signed a bill into law designating the portion of Pennsylvania Route 291 through Chester as the Rosa Parks Memorial Highway.
* 2007: Nashville, Tennessee, renamed MetroCenter Boulevard (8th Avenue North) (US 41A and SR 12) as Rosa L. Parks Boulevard.
* On March 14, 2008, the State of California Government Center at 464 West Fourth Street, on the northwest corner of Court and Fourth Streets, in San Bernardino was renamed the Rosa Parks Memorial Building.
* 2009: On July 14, the Rosa Parks Transit Center opened in Detroit at the corner of Michigan and Cass Avenues.
* 2010: in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a plaza in the heart of the city was named Rosa Parks Circle.
* 2012:
** A street in West Valley City, Utah (the state's second largest city), leading to the Utah Cultural Celebration Center, was renamed Rosa Parks Drive.
* 2013:
** On February 1, President Barack Obama proclaimed February 4, 2013, as the "100th Anniversary of the Birth of Rosa Parks". He called "upon all Americans to observe this day with appropriate service, community, and education programs to honor Rosa Parks's enduring legacy".
** On February 4, to celebrate Rosa Parks's 100th birthday, the Henry Ford Museum declared the day a "National Day of Courage" with 12 hours of virtual and on-site activities featuring nationally recognized speakers, musical and dramatic interpretative performances, a panel presentation of "Rosa's Story" and a reading of the tale "Quiet Strength". The actual bus on which Rosa Parks sat was made available for the public to board and sit in the seat that Rosa Parks refused to give up.
** On February 4, 2,000 birthday wishes gathered from people throughout the United States were transformed into 200 graphics messages at a celebration held on her 100th Birthday at the Davis Theater for the Performing Arts in Montgomery, Alabama. This was the 100th Birthday Wishes Project managed by the Rosa Parks Museum at Troy University and the Mobile Studio and was also a declared event by the Senate.
** During both events the USPS unveiled a postage stamp in her honor.
** On February 27, Parks became the first African-American woman to have her likeness depicted in National Statuary Hall. The monument, created by sculptor Eugene Daub, is a part of the Capitol Art Collection among nine other women featured in the National Statuary Hall Collection.
* 2014:
** The asteroid 284996 Rosaparks, discovered in 2010 by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, was named in her memory. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on September 9, 2014 (M.P.C. 89835).
** A statue of Parks by Thomas Jay Warren was dedicated at Essex County Courthouse in Newark, New Jersey
* 2015:
** The papers of Rosa Parks were cataloged into the Library of Congress, after years of a legal battle.
** On December 13, the new Rosa Parks Railway Station opened in Paris, France.
* 2016:
** The house lived in by Rosa Parks's brother, Sylvester McCauley, his wife Daisy, and their 13 children, and where Rosa Parks often visited and stayed after leaving Montgomery, was bought by her niece Rhea McCauley for $500 and donated to the artist Ryan Mendoza. It was subsequently dismantled and shipped to Berlin where it was re-erected in Mendoza's garden. In 2018 it was returned to the United States and rebuilt at the WaterFire Arts Center, Providence, Rhode Island, where it was put on public display, accompanied by a range of interpretive materials and public and scholarly events.
** The National Museum of African American History and Culture was opened, containing among other things the dress that Parks was sewing the day she refused to give up her seat to a white man.
* 2018:
** Continuing the Conversation, a public sculpture of Parks, was unveiled on the main campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
* 2019:
** A statue of Rosa Parks was unveiled in Montgomery, Alabama.
* 2021:
** On January 20, a bust of Rosa Parks by Artis Lane was added to the Oval Office when Joe Biden began his presidency. The sculpture is currently displayed next to Augustus Saint-Gaudens' bust of Abraham Lincoln.
* 2023: Rosa Parks statue approved for Alabama State Capitol grounds.
* The Rosa Parks Congressional Gold Medal
* Parks and President Bill Clinton
* Rosa Parks Transit Center in Detroit
* President Barack Obama sitting on the bus, in the same row on the opposite side from where Parks was arrested.
* A plaque entitled "The Bus Stop" at Dexter Avenue and Montgomery Street – where Parks boarded the bus – pays tribute to her and the success of the Montgomery bus boycott.
* The No. 2857 bus on which Parks was riding before her arrest (a GM "old-look" transit bus, serial number 1132) is now a museum exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum.
* Rosa Parks Railway Station in Paris

## In popular culture
### Film and television

The documentary Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks (2001) received a 2002 nomination for Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject. The Rosa Parks Story (2002) starred Angela Bassett; film scholar Delphine Letort argued that in the work, "the historical narrative of the civil rights movement is simplified into a story that reproduces stereotypes popularized by both race melodramas and mainstream media."$^{:31–32}$ The film Barbershop (2002) featured a barber, played by Cedric the Entertainer, arguing with others that other African Americans before Parks had been active in bus integration, but she was renowned as an NAACP secretary. The activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton launched a boycott against the film, contending it was "disrespectful", but NAACP president Kweisi Mfume stated he thought the controversy was "overblown". Parks was offended and boycotted the NAACP 2003 Image Awards ceremony, which Cedric hosted.
In 2013, Parks was portrayed by Llewella Gideon in the first series of the Sky Arts comedy series Psychobitches. The 2018 episode "Rosa", of the science-fiction television series Doctor Who, centers on Rosa Parks, as portrayed by Vinette Robinson. The UK children's historical show Horrible Histories included a song about Parks in its fifth series.
In 2022, the documentary The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks was released on Peacock; it is the first full-length documentary about Parks. Also that year, a major motion film Bowl Game Armageddon was announced, which will spotlight Rosa Parks and Emmett Till leading up to the 1956 Sugar Bowl and Atlanta riots

### Music

In March 1999, Parks filed a lawsuit (Rosa Parks v. LaFace Records) against American hip-hop duo OutKast and their record company, claiming that the duo's song "Rosa Parks", the most successful radio single of their 1998 album Aquemini, had used her name without permission. The lawsuit was settled on April 15, 2005 (six months and nine days before Parks's death); OutKast, their producer and record labels paid Parks an undisclosed cash settlement. They also agreed to work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute to create educational programs about the life of Rosa Parks. The record label and OutKast admitted no wrongdoing. Responsibility for the payment of legal fees was not disclosed.
In 2020, rapper Nicki Minaj incorporated Rosa Parks into her song "Yikes" where she rapped, "All you bitches Rosa Park, uh-oh, get your ass up" in reference to the Montgomery bus boycott.

### Other

In 1979, the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Parks's name and picture. She is card No. 27 in the set. In 2019, Mattel released a Barbie doll in Parks's likeness as part of their "Inspiring Women" series.