February 4th is the anniversary of the birth of civil rights activist and icon, Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama in 1913. She grew up with her family on her grandparents' farm. She used to keep her grandfather company while he guarded the family home against the KKK. She was educated at home by her mother, a teacher. She attended black public schools until she had to leave the Black Teacher's College at 16 because of illness in the family.
Rosa married at 19 and returned to high school to earn her diploma. She worked as a seamstress. She lived in a segregated society. In 1943, Rosa Parks became a member of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and she served as its secretary until 1956.
In 1955, Parks was riding a crowded Montgomery city bus when the driver asked Parks and other Black passengers to surrender their seats to white passengers and stand. Three of the passengers left their seats, but Parks refused. She was arrested and fined $10 for the offense and $4 for court costs, neither of which she paid. Instead, she accepted Montgomery NAACP chapter president E.D. Nixon's offer to help her appeal the conviction and challenge legal segregation in Alabama. Rosa Parks' act of defiance on the bus ignited to the Montgomery Bus Boycott when the Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of Black women working for civil rights, began circulating flyers calling for a boycott of the bus system on December 5, the day Parks would be tried in municipal court.
Approximately 40,000 Black bus riders—the majority of the city's bus riders—boycotted the system the next day, December 5. That afternoon, Black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). The group elected Martin Luther King Jr., the 26-year-old-pastor of Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as its president, and decided to continue the boycott until the city met its demands. The boycott lasted 381 days and was instrumental in challenging segregation laws.
This boycott not only highlighted the injustices faced by African Americans but propelled Martin Luther King Jr. into the national spotlight as a leader of the civil rights movement.
After Parks died in 2005, her body lay in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, an honor reserved for private citizens who performed a great service for their country. For two days, mourners visited her casket and gave thanks for her dedication to civil rights. Parks was the first woman and only the second Black person to receive the distinction.