Rosa Parks• 1913: Rosa Louise McCauley is born

Feb. 4 in Tuskegee, Alabama, to James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a teacher.

• 1928: She attends Booker T. Washington High School for ninth grade, but drops out when her mother becomes seriously ill. For 10th and 11th grades, she attends Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes.

• 1932: Marries Raymond Parks, a barber, at 19.

• 1934: Receives her high school diploma with the encouragement of her husband.

• 2005: Rosa Parks dies on Oct. 24 in her Detroit home.

Impact made on History

• 1943: She refuses to give up her seat and is ejected from a bus. This was 12 years before her historic stand. She tries to register to vote and is denied. She becomes secretary of the Montgomery NAACP.

• 1945: Finally receives certificate for voting after three attempts.

• 1955: On Dec. 1, she refuses to give up her seat to a white man on a racially segregated bus. She is arrested, fingerprinted, jailed by police and fined $14. She stands trial and on Dec. 5 is found guilty of breaking the segregation laws. The Montgomery bus boycott begins and will last 381 days. The boycott brings the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association.

Mother of the civil rights Movement

• Rosa Parks, the "mother of the civil rights movement" was one of the most important citizens of the 20th century. Mrs. Parks was a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama when, in December of 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. The bus driver had her arrested. She was tried and convicted of violating a local ordinance.

• Her act sparked a citywide boycott of the bus system by blacks that lasted more than a year. The boycott raised an unknown clergyman named Martin Luther King, Jr., to national prominence and resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on city buses. Over the next four decades, she helped make her fellow Americans aware of the history of the civil rights struggle. This pioneer in the struggle for racial equality was the recipient of innumerable honors, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her example remains an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere.

-Resources-• http://www.time.com/time/time100/h

eroes/profile/parks01.html• http://www.girlpower.gov/girlarea/gp

guests/RosaParks.htm• http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/ro

saparks/a/timeline_parksr.htm• http://www.twoop.com/people/rosa_p

arks.html