“There were times when it would have been easy to fall apart or to go in the opposite direction, but somehow I felt that if I took one more step, someone would come along to join me.” Rosa Parks impacted Civil Rights because of her arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat which sparked the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. She moved with her parents, James and Leona McCauley, to Pine Level, Alabama, at age 2 to be with Leona's parents. Her brother, Sylvester, was born in 1915, and shortly after that her parents divorced. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, at age 11 and eventually attended high school there, a laboratory school at the Alabama State Teachers’ College for Negroes. She left at 16, early in 11th grade, because she needed to care for her dying grandmother and, shortly after that, her chronically ill mother. In 1932, at 19, she married…show more content… When she left her job on December 1, 1955, she had no idea that she would be sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a 381 day protest made by African-Americans, protesting the segregation of buses. After the boycott ended in 1956, she continued to work for the Civil Rights Movement. On several occasions she joined King to support his efforts. The following year, Parks moved north, to Detroit, Michigan, where she worked for Congressman John Conyers. Parks was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993. She was presented the Medal of Freedom Award by President Bill Clinton in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. The Southern Christian Leadership Council established an annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award. After her death on October 24, 2005, Congress approved a resolution allowing her body to lie in honor in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. She was the 31st person, the first woman, and only the second black person to be accorded that honor since the practice began in
