Rosa Parks: A Life of Influence Marked by One Act of Defiance

Rosa Parks, birth name Rosa Louise McCauley, was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. She was a very precocious and observant child, noticing from a young age that a discrepancy existed in the way blacks and whites were treated. When she was 10 years old, she held up a brick to protect herself from a young white boy who was threatening to hit her. Her early acts of defiance were considered punishable by Rosa’s grandmother, despite the fact that Rosa was only engaging in self defense. It wasn’t until much later that Rosa came to realize that her grandmother was only protecting her because in that time, “black people could get beaten or killed for having that attitude.”[1] When Rosa began attending school, she noticed segregation for the first time; black children went to different schools than white children and the “black” schools were far inferior in every way. As she was a young child, Rosa had not done much research but was aware of racism and hatred that black people endured. Although Rosa Parks is widely known for beginning the civil rights movement when she refused to give up her seat on a public bus for a white passenger, this iconic moment is of relative importance when compared to her lifetime of influential decisions and actions that resulted in equality for blacks. Rosa Parks began her journey as a woman of influence when she met Raymond Parks, her future husband. Parks was the first activist Rosa had met and he was a long-time member of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.[2] Raymond became very discouraged by the low number of registered black voters. Most blacks were under the impression that they needed a white person to vouch for them before they could register to vote, but Mr. Edgar Daniel Nixon proved to Rosa otherwise. Nixon showed