HYCAA2012: Rosa Parks pioneer in civil rights

She was born on February the 4 , 1913 in Alabama united states. She was raised in a poor family, her father was a carpenter and her mother a school teacher. During her life she took various jobs among them housekeeper, domestic worker and hospital aide.

In 1932 she married Raymond Park who was a barber and who belonged to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP) . Some years later, she became secretary of the association.

All over her life, Rosa had seen the segregation between blacks and whites; the discrimination happened in every place. Even thought in public transport buses. Black people could not sit just anywhere they wanted in the bus. They had to sit in the back of the bus. If white people were already sitting in the front of the bus, the black person had to pay the fare, get off the bus, and reenter at the back door. Sometimes the bus driver just drove off and left them before they could get back on at the back door. If the bus filled up with people, the driver would ask a black person to move so he could reposition the movable sign which divided the black and white sections.

But on the 1st of December, 19995, Rosa and four other people were sitting in the first seats of the black setion of the bus, the driver moved the board back and asked the four to get out. The other three complied, while Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. The driver called the police and she was arrested. After this incident, she decided to stand up for her rigths because she was tired of being humilated.

As a result. Began a nationwide movement that launched the career of none other than Martin Luther King; which paved the way for the removal of tne racist and discriminatory attitude withing the United States of America.

On the 13th of November, 1956, the United States Supreme Court passed a court order which deemed the racial segregacion on buses to be unconstitutional. After that, Rosa Parks and her NAACP associates, suffered many attack from segregationists.

But life for Rosa and her husband became very difficult; both of them lost their jobs. They had to move to Hampton, Virginia and then to Detroid where she worked as a seamstress.

In 1965 she was appointed as a secretary and receptionist in the congressional office of African-American U.S.representative John Conyers. She worked there until she retired in 1988.

In 1977 her husband die of cancer.

In 1992 Rosa Parks published her autobiography .

Later on in 1996 she received honors such us the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinto

Rosa Parks passed away on October 24, 2005 at the age of 92.