Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Boglebaum here. Most of us know Rosa Parks as the African American woman who quietly but firmly refused to give up her bus seat to a white person on December one, n in Montgomery, Alabama. That small act of resistance sparked the year long Montgomery Bus Boycott, which in turn kickstarted national efforts to end racial segregation in the
United States. In honor of that, we wanted to fill in some of the often misunderstood circumstances surrounding parks resistance. To start with. This wasn't some totally random act. Parks was a lifelong activist, and she came from a family of activists. Parks was born in nineteen thirteen to James and Leona mcaulay. The couple separated two years later, and Parks's mother moved the family to her parents farm in Pine Level, Alabama. Park's grandparents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards, were
former slaves who strongly believed in racial equality. One of parks early memories was of her grandfather's standing guard with his shotgun as the Ku Klux Klan marched down their street. And of him telling her stories about black history and courageous figures like Crisps Attics, Harriett Tebman, and Marcus Garvey.
In nineteen thirty two, when she was nineteen, Rosa McCauley married Raymond Parks, an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or n double A CP, Parks began her civil rights activism shortly after graduating from high school and continued until shortly before her death in two thousand five at age ninety two. She served for years as secretary to the president of n w A
CPS Montgomery Chapter. Parks also worked on issues such as voter registration, desegregation of schools and public spaces, and justice for black victims of white brutality. In addition, she participated in numerous major civil rights events, such as the nineteen sixty three March on Washington and the nineteen sixty five Selma to Montgomery March. Parks was also an activist for women's rights and ending the Vietnam War. At one time,
she served on the board of Planned Parenthood. When she made her famous stand, it wasn't her first interaction with the bus driver. The driver James E. Blake often made derogatory marks to African Americans, especially women. He also made black people get off his bus after paying, then reboard in the rear, and sometimes he'd drive away before they got back. On twelve years before the boycott in nineteen forty three, Blake tried to make Parks reboard after paying.
She refused, and he tried to push her off the bus. After that, Parks avoided Blake's bus no matter what, But on that faithful day she didn't notice Blake was the driver when she stepped on board. Her family reports that Parks was distracted thinking about Emmett till as news had just come out that his lynchers were going to go free. But about that famous stand. In telling the story, sometimes it's mistakenly said that she sat in the whites only section.
What really happened was this. In Montgomery's buses had thirty six seats. The first ten were reserved for white people, the middle sixteen were first come, first served, with priority given to white people, and the last ten were for black people. Parks sat down in the first row of the middle section, next to a black man two black women's out across the aisle. The other black people got up when Blake told them to. Parks, as we know, did not, and she didn't refuse to give up her
best seat because her feet hurt. She wrote in her autobiography, I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then I was forty two. No, the only tired I was was tired of giving in. Several months before Parks refused to give up her seat, fifteen year old Claudette Colvin did the same thing, but unlike Parks, Colvin made a scene and was physically removed
by police officers. Some say parks refusal ignited the boycott and not Colvin's because Parks was calm, polite, and slightly older, which made her more s at figure, and Parkes was well known and liked in the community through her work with the n double a c P. However, it was Colvin, not Parks, who was part of the lawsuit changing the
constitutionality of bus segregation in Montgomery. You may have seen photos of Parks mug shot or being fingerprinted, but those are not from that first famous arrest there from two months later, with the Montgomery bus boycott going strong, when Parks was helping arrange carpool rides to people who refused to ride the buses, on February twenty ninety six, a grand jury indicted Parks and others for violating in Alabama
law prohibiting organized boycotts. Once again, Parks was arrested and jailed. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted one days and ended when the Supreme Court said segregation on public transportation was unconstitutional. Although the boycott was a success, it threw Rosa and Raymond parks life into turmoil. Montgomery Fair Department store, where Parks worked as a seamstress, fired her. Raymond was also fired his job after his boss said he couldn't talk
about Rosa or the boycott at work. The couple, who had received threatening phone calls, death threats, and hate mail during the boycott, continued to receive them for years after. In nineteen fifty seven, after neither could find steady employment in Montgomery, they joined Rose's brother and cousins in Detroit, taking along her mother, Leona, But even in Detroit, Parks
had trouble finding work. Finally, in nineteen sixty five, she was hired as an administrative assistant for Congressman John Conyers, Jr. A position she held until her nine five retirement. Parks died in two thousand five, and her body lay in honor at the US Capital Rotunda, the first woman to receive that distinction, but she remained an activist all her life.
In at the age of eighty one, she was mugged by a young black man, a crime that many pundits saw as a sign of decaying values and young people, but Parks saw it differently. She said at the time, I hope to some day see an end to the conditions in our country that would make people want to hurt others. M Today's episode was written by Melanie red Zeke McManus and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other topics, visit our home planet has Stuff Works dot com, and for more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.