Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks Rosa parks was born on February 4,1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. She was a civil rights leader. She attended Alabama State College, worked as a seamstress and as a housekeeper. Her father, James McCauley, was a carpenter, and her mother, Leona (Edward's) McCauley was a teacher. Rosa P. had one younger brother named, Sylvester. Her family lived in Tuskegee. When Rosa was two years-old her parents split up and she, her mother, and her brother moved to her grandparents farm in Nearby Pine Level, Alabama. Her grandparents were one of the few black families who owned their own land, rather than work for someone else. Although they were poor, they were able to raise enough food for all. During the first half of this century for all blacks living in America skin color affected every part of their lives. The South in particular was very racist. Slavery had been abolished only by some fifty years earlier, and blacks were still hated and were feared by whites because of skin color. Jim Crow had a law "separate but equal." The Supreme Court ruled in 1896, that equal protection could not mean separate but equal facilities. Blacks were made to feel inferior to whites in every way. They were restricted in their choices of housing and jobs, were forced to attend segregated schools, and were prohibited from using many restaurants, movie theaters. Rosa Parks said, years later, "Whites would accuse you of causing trouble when all of you were doing was acting like a normal human being, instead of crining. You didn't have to wait for a lynching. You died each time you found yourself face to face with this kind of discrimination." Rosa Parks didn't like attending a poor, one-room school, with few books or supplies, not being able to stop on her way home from school to get a soda or a candybar. She hated how they were parts for blacks like restaurants, trains, and bus and even being forced to give up her seat for a white person. Rosa's mother, Leona McCauley, worked as a teacher, and the whole family knew the value of education. Rosa attended the local black elementary school, where her mother was the only teacher. When she graduated, the family worked hard to save enough money to send her to a private school for black girls. At the age of 11 she began to attend Montgomery Industrial School for Girls.