Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913. Her arrest for refusing to surrender
her seat aboard a Montgomery, AL, public bus led to a boycott of the city's
buses by Black customers. The 13-month boycott ended after the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that the city's segregated buses were unconstitutional.
Photo courtesy of the State of Alabama.
On February 4, 1913, Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, AL. McCauley married Raymond Parks in 1932. She joined the Montgomery, AL, chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943, where she worked as the chapter's secretary under civil rights leader and union organizer E.D. Nixon.
On November 27, 1955, Rosa Parks attended a meeting at Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where she learned that the men who mutilated and killed Emmett Till—a Black teenager who supposedly whistled at a White woman—had been acquitted. She also learned the latest news about the recent murders of civil rights activists George W. Lee and Lamar Smith. Four days later, Parks left work, boarded a Montgomery public bus, paid her fare, and took a seat in the first row of the "colored" section. When the White section filled, the driver ordered Parks and three other Black passengers out of their seats. Parks later said that she recalled Emmett Till at that moment and refused to move.
The bus driver called the police who arrested Parks. Following her arrest, the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) urged the city's Black population to boycott public transportation on December 5, 1955—the date of Parks' trial for disorderly conducted and violating the city's segregation laws. The 1-day boycott proved so successful that the MIA agreed to continue the boycott to protest city and state segregation laws.
The MIA organized carpools and private taxis to assist bus patrons. The arrest and indictment of 89 of the boycott's organizers (including Martin Luther King, Jr. and 23 other ministers) brought national attention to the boycott and the city's segregation laws. While Parks and King appealed their convictions, a three-judge federal court ruled on another bus segregation lawsuit. The June 5, 1956, Browder v. Gayle ruling stated that any law requiring racially segregated seating on buses violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Despite the ruling, segregated seating and the bus boycott continued while attorneys for the City of Montgomery and Mayor W.A. Gayle appealed the decision.
In November 1956, the City of Montgomery, AL, sued in a state court for an injunction to forbid the MIA's carpool operation claiming it infringed on the bus company's exclusive franchise. Judge Eugene W. Carter granted the injunction on November 13, halting the carpools the following day. However, on November 14, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the lower federal court's June 5, 1956, ruling. Upon receiving official written notice of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on December 20, 1956, Mayor Gayle ordered the buses desegregated and the 381-day boycott ended.
Parks left Montgomery, AL, in 1957, and eventually settled in Detroit, MI, where she remained active in the Civil Rights Movement and supported other causes throughout her life. She died at age 92 on October 24, 2005. In the days prior to her November 2 funeral, the City of Montgomery reserved the front row of seats aboard its public buses with a black ribbon to honor the life and courage of Rosa Parks.
You can learn more about Rosa Parks and Civil Rights Movement using census data and records. For example:
The Montgomery, AL, public bus (#2857) on which Rosa Parks rode December 1, 1955, remained in service until the early 1970s. The
Henry Ford Museum eventually purchased it for $492,000. The museum unveiled the restored bus in 2003 and it is now the focal
point of its "With Liberty and Justice for All" exhibit.
An identical example of the historic bus (shown above) is on display at the National Civil Rights Museum .
Photo courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration.
In a February 1, 1953, episode of the popular television show, "The Cisco Kid," Cisco (Duncan Renaldo) and sidekick Pancho (Leo Carrillo) track outlaws posing as census takers.
Legitimate census takers always display their credentials during a visit. Learn more about how the Census Bureau protects your privacy at its Are You in a Survey Web page.
On April 11, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968—also known as the Fair Housing Act.
The act provides equal housing opportunities regardless of race, religion, or national origin. Beginning in 1974, the law prohibits gender discrimination and since 1988, gives protection to the disabled and families with children.
Black homeownership rates rose from 34.5 percent in 1950 to 41.6 percent in 1970 (2 years after passage of the act). In 2017, the rate of Black homeownership (Black Alone) was about 43 percent.
Photo courtesy of Tompkins County, NY.
On July 2, 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr. attended the White House ceremony during which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination on the basis of race in public accommodations, in publicly-owned or -operated facilities, in employment and union membership, and in the registration of voters.
Photo courtesy of the National Parks Service.