Rosa Parks quick facts
- Rosa Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama.
- She was 42 and worked as a seamstress in a department store.
- The Montgomery Bus Boycott that followed lasted 381 days.
- In November 1956 the Supreme Court upheld a ruling ending Montgomery’s bus segregation.
- In 2005 she became the first woman to lie in honour in the US Capitol.
Rosa Parks was 42 years old, heading home from her job as a seamstress. She was not the first person to refuse to give up a bus seat. But what happened next changed American history.
Growing up in Alabama
Rosa Parks was born Rosa McCauley on 4 February 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. She grew up in and around Montgomery.
She went to the laboratory school of Alabama State College. In 1932 she married Raymond Parks, a barber. He was a member of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which worked for the rights of Black Americans.
Working for civil rights before 1955
Her stand on the bus was not her first act of courage. In 1943 she joined the Montgomery branch of the NAACP, and she was elected its secretary. Two years later, in 1945, she registered to vote.
From 1949 she advised the branch’s Youth Council. The young members challenged segregation themselves, for example by checking out books from libraries meant for white people only.
In the summer of 1955, a few months before her arrest, she went to a workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. It was about how to put the Supreme Court’s ruling against segregated schools into practice. So when the moment came on the bus, she already knew what a stand like hers could start.
What happened on the bus
It was 1 December 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama. On city buses, the front ten seats were kept for white passengers only.
Rosa Parks sat in the first row just behind those seats. As the bus filled up, the driver ordered her and three other Black passengers to give up their row for white passengers. The other three moved. Rosa Parks refused.
She pointed out that she was not in a seat kept for white passengers. The driver called the police, and she was arrested. The charge was “refusing to obey orders of bus driver”.
The law she was arrested under
In the 1950s, many laws in the southern United States kept Black and white people apart. This was called segregation.
Montgomery had a city law that segregated its buses. Rosa Parks was convicted under it, and she appealed. To appeal means to ask a higher court to look at the case again and decide whether the first court got it wrong.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
Her arrest sparked a protest. Black residents of Montgomery stopped riding the city’s buses altogether. This is called a boycott.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days. It was peaceful, carefully organised, and it drew attention from around the world. A young minister, Martin Luther King Jr., then just 26, became one of its leaders.
The court case that ended bus segregation
While the boycott went on, a separate case went to court. It was called Browder v. Gayle.
On 4 June 1956, a federal court ruled that segregation on Montgomery’s buses broke the United States Constitution. On 13 November 1956, the Supreme Court agreed. The Supreme Court is the highest court in the United States, so there was nobody left to overrule it. Bus segregation in Montgomery had to end.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 4 February 1913 | Rosa McCauley is born in Tuskegee, Alabama |
| 1943 | She joins the Montgomery NAACP and becomes its secretary |
| 2 March 1955 | Claudette Colvin, aged 15, is arrested for refusing her seat |
| 1 December 1955 | Rosa Parks is arrested on a Montgomery bus |
| 4 June 1956 | A federal court rules bus segregation unconstitutional |
| 13 November 1956 | The Supreme Court upholds that ruling |
| 1988 | She retires from John Conyers’s office in Detroit |
| 1999 | Rosa Parks receives the Congressional Gold Medal |
| 30 October 2005 | She becomes the first woman to lie in honour in the US Capitol |
The girl who refused first
Nine months before Rosa Parks, a 15-year-old called Claudette Colvin did the same thing. On 2 March 1955, on her way home from school, she refused to give up her seat. She was arrested too.
Local civil rights leaders decided not to build their big legal challenge around her. They worried they could not win with her. But she did not disappear from the story.
At the time, people described Claudette Colvin as “mouthy” and “feisty”, while Rosa Parks was seen as calm and steady. When Claudette Colvin refused to move, police forced her off the bus and pushed her into a police car.
Claudette Colvin became a star witness in Browder v. Gayle, the very case that ended bus segregation in Montgomery. In 2021, when she was 82, her record from that arrest was finally wiped clean.
A new life in Detroit
On 5 August 1957, the group that ran the boycott, the Montgomery Improvement Association, held a “Rosa Parks Day”. At Mt. Zion AME Zion Church, they gave her $800 as a thank-you.
Rosa Parks herself found it hard to believe that what she did on the bus had started a whole movement.
After the boycott, Rosa Parks moved north to Detroit, Michigan, to find better work.
In 1964 she backed John Conyers, a Black lawyer who was running for the United States Congress. When he won, he hired her to work in his office. She stayed there for 23 years, until she retired in 1988.
In 1987 she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, named after her and her husband, to help young people. Later she told her own story in a book called Rosa Parks: My Story.
Her life and how she is remembered
Rosa Parks became one of the best-known figures of the civil rights movement.
In 1999, the United States Congress gave her the Congressional Gold Medal. She died on 24 October 2005, aged 92. On 30 and 31 October, thousands of people came to pay their respects as she lay in honour in the Rotunda of the US Capitol. She was the first woman ever given that honour.
The bus is now in a museum
The bus Rosa Parks rode that day was a 1948 General Motors bus. After it was taken off the road in the 1970s, it sat in a field in Montgomery for about 30 years. Its owners used it to store wood and tools.
It was bus number 2857. In 2001, The Henry Ford museum in Michigan bought it at an online auction. Bidding started at $50,000 on 25 October and went on until 2 o’clock the next morning. The final price was $492,000. Experts then spent more than $300,000 restoring it to the way it looked in 1955.
It went on show on 1 February 2003, as part of the museum’s “Celebrate Black History” programme. Today it stands in the museum’s “With Liberty and Justice for All” exhibition, where visitors can see the very bus where she refused to move.
The records you can still see
The National Archives still keeps the papers from her case. They include her two-page police report, her fingerprint card and a diagram of the bus showing where everyone sat.
Those documents were used as evidence in court. They are held in Atlanta, and teachers use them in lessons today.
Three things people get wrong
She was not the first to refuse. Claudette Colvin, aged 15, was arrested for the same thing nine months earlier.
She was not sitting in the white section. She was in the first row behind the ten seats kept for white passengers. She was told to move so that more white passengers could sit.
It was not won in a day. The boycott lasted 381 days, and it took a federal court and then the Supreme Court to end bus segregation in Montgomery.
Did you know? The National Archives still keeps Rosa Parks’s two-page police report, her fingerprint card and a diagram of the bus showing where everyone sat. All three were used as evidence in court.
Try it
Count 381 days forward on a calendar from today and see where you land. That is how long the people of Montgomery kept up their bus boycott.
Knowledge check
Where was Rosa Parks sitting when she refused to move?
Show answer
In the first row just behind the ten seats kept for white passengers. The driver ordered her row to move so more white passengers could sit, and she refused.
Who refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery nine months before Rosa Parks?
Show answer
Claudette Colvin, who was 15. She was arrested on 2 March 1955 on her way home from school.
Frequently asked questions
What did Rosa Parks do?
Rosa Parks refused a bus driver’s order to give up her seat for white passengers in Montgomery, Alabama, on 1 December 1955. She was arrested, and her arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Why was Rosa Parks arrested?
Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to obey the bus driver’s order to move, under a Montgomery city law that segregated buses. She was convicted and appealed.
How long did the Montgomery Bus Boycott last?
The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days. Martin Luther King Jr., then 26, became one of its leaders.
How did bus segregation end in Montgomery?
A court case called Browder v. Gayle ended it. On 4 June 1956 a federal court ruled Montgomery’s bus segregation unconstitutional, and on 13 November 1956 the Supreme Court upheld that ruling.
Was Rosa Parks the first person to refuse her seat?
No. Claudette Colvin, aged 15, was arrested in Montgomery for refusing to give up her bus seat on 2 March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks. She later became a star witness in Browder v. Gayle, the case that ended the city’s bus segregation.
How was Rosa Parks honoured?
Rosa Parks received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. When she died in October 2005, she became the first woman to lie in honour in the Rotunda of the US Capitol.
Where was Rosa Parks born?
Rosa Parks was born Rosa McCauley on 4 February 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama, and grew up in and around Montgomery. She was educated at the laboratory school of Alabama State College.
What did Rosa Parks do before the bus boycott?
Rosa Parks worked for civil rights for years before 1955. She became secretary of the Montgomery NAACP in 1943, advised its Youth Council from 1949, and attended a workshop on ending segregation at the Highlander Folk School in the summer of 1955.
Where is the Rosa Parks bus now?
The bus is at The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The museum bought it at an online auction in 2001 for $492,000, restored it to its 1955 condition and put it on show in February 2003.
Sources
- National Archives: an act of courage, the arrest records of Rosa Parks — the arrest, the charge, the seating, the boycott, Browder v. Gayle and the surviving documents
- US House of Representatives: the honoring of Rosa Parks — the Congressional Gold Medal and lying in honour in the Capitol Rotunda
- Smithsonian Magazine: Claudette Colvin — the 15-year-old arrested nine months before Rosa Parks
- Stanford University, King Institute: Rosa Parks — her early life, NAACP work, the Highlander workshop, Rosa Parks Day in 1957 and her years in Detroit
- The Henry Ford: curating and preserving the Rosa Parks bus — the bus’s auction, restoration and display
- National Women’s History Museum: Rosa Parks — the date of her death, her age and her book, Rosa Parks: My Story
