December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested On Thursday, December 1, 1955, the 42-year-old Rosa Parks was commuting home from a long day of work at the Montgomery Fair department store by bus. On December 1, 1955, during a typical evening rush hour in Montgomery, Alabama, a 42-year-old woman took a seat on the bus on her way home from the Montgomery Fair department store where she worked as a seamstress. Before she reached her destination, she quietly set off a social revolution when the bus driver instructed her to move back, and she refused. Rosa Parks, an African American, was When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus for white passengers in 1955, she was arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation ordinances. Her action sparked the Montgomery bus boycott , led by the Montgomery Improvement Association and Martin Luther King, Jr. , that eventually succeeded in achieving Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913, to Leona (née Edwards), a teacher, and James McCauley, a carpenter.In addition to African ancestry, one of Parks's great-grandfathers was Scots-Irish, and one of her great-grandmothers was a part–Native American slave. After being arrested again, Parks lost her job and moved to Detroit, where she was an essential member of the Black Power movement. She was 95 years old when she died in 2005, and she was the first African-American woman to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda (via Find a Grave). Parks was arrested two times during her life. Later, she advised the NAACP Youth Council. Denied the right to vote on at least two occasions because of her race, Rosa Parks also worked with the Voters League to prepare blacks to register to vote. Rosa Parks Was Arrested for Civil Disobedience December 1, 1955 Parks’s arrest was followed by a one-day bus boycott on her court date. Rosa Parks Arrested. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for disorderly conduct for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. Civil Rights leader E. D. Nixon bailed her out of jail, joined by white friends Clifford Durr, an attorney, and his wife, Virginia. The same year Rosa Parks was arrested, four Black women were arrested in Montgomery for not giving up their seats. They were 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, 18-year-old Mary Louise Smith, 36-year-old Aurelia Browder and Susie McDonald, who was around her seventies at the time of her arrest. William Pretzer was five years old when Rosa Parks of Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested. It was December 1, 1955. The 42-year-old seamstress was on a city bus, en route home after a day’s work Parks' legacy goes beyond the Dec. 1, 1955, arrest On Oct. 24, 2005, Parks died in Detroit. In her life, she was honored with the Martin Luther King Jr. Award and by the NAACP with the Spingarn Medal. Two iconic pictures of Parks being fingerprinted (seen here) and of her mugshot are not from this arrest, but rather from her arrest in February 1956 during boycott when she was arrested along with other boycott organizers for their role in the boycott. But they are regularly mis-attributed to this arrest. In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, promoting youth education and leadership, ensuring that her legacy as a champion for civil rights continued to inspire future generations. Personal Life: Married Life | Husband. Rosa Parks met Raymond Parks in 1932 when she was just 19 years old, and they soon Rosa Parks: In 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery. On December 5, 1955, she was convicted of disorderly conduct and fined prompting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Rosa Parks was 42 years old when she was arrested in 1955 for refusing to surrender her bus seat for a white man. She was returning home from a long Rosa Parks occupies an iconic status in the civil rights movement after she refused to vacate a seat on a bus in favor of a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1955, Parks rejected a bus driver's order to leave a row of four seats in the "colored" section once the white section had filled up and move to the back of the bus. And it was the year that two white men brutally murdered 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was Black, in Mississippi. At about the same time, an African American woman named Rosa Parks was arrested In fact, Rosa Parks was just 42 years old when she took that famous ride on a City Lines bus in Montgomery – a town known for being the first capital of the pro-slavery Confederacy during the Nine months before Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested in Montgomery for the same act. The city's Black leaders prepared to protest In 1932 she married Raymond Parks, a barber and member of the NAACP. At that time, Raymond Parks was active in the Scottsboro case. In 1943 Rosa Parks joined the local chapter of the NAACP and was elected secretary. Two years later, she registered to vote, after twice being denied. By 1949 Parks was advisor to the local NAACP Youth Council. The driver, who had treated Parks rudely and evicted her from his bus in 1943, contacts the police and she is arrested. Fingerprint card for Rosa Parks; Photo: Universal History Archive/Getty Images
Articles and news, personal stories, interviews with experts.
Photos from events, contest for the best costume, videos from master classes.