Skip to main content

School Spirit

Our Namesake

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks – 1913-2005

Rosa Parks

A Chronology of Rosa Parks' Life

  • 1913 – Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4
  • 1934 – Receives high school diploma
  • 1943
    • Becomes secretary of the Montgomery NAACP
    • Tries to register to vote and denied
    • Forced off bus for not entering at back door
  • 1945 – Finally receives certificate for voting
  • 1949 – Becomes advisor to NAACP Youth Council
  • 1955
    • Meets Martin Luther King Jr.
    • Refused to give-up her seat on the bus
  • 1963 – Attends civil rights march on Washington
  • 1965 – Begins working for Congressman John Conyers in Detroit
  • 1987 – Cofounds the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development
  • 1991 – Bust of Rosa Parks is unveiled at Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.
  • 1996 – Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom
  • 1999 – Awarded Congressional Gold Medal
  • 2005 – Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005

Memories of our lives, of our works and deeds will continue in others.

Rosa Parks