The Institute sponsors an annual summer program for teenagers called Pathways to Freedom.

Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The Southern Christian Leadership Council established an annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award in her honor.Īfter the death of her husband in 1977, Mrs.

Parks and her husband moved to Detroit, Michigan where Mrs. Parks had been fined, and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation. A Supreme Court Decision struck down the Montgomery ordinance under which Mrs. King, and their cause to the attention of the world. The boycott lasted 382 days and brought Mrs. The association called for a boycott of the city-owned bus company. The bus incident led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, led by the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be, and to let it be known that we did not wish to continue being second-class citizens.' We didn't seem to have too many successes. There were cases of flogging, peonage, murder, and rape.

Parks recalled, 'but we did not get the publicity. 'I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP,' Mrs. The couple joined the local chapter of the NAACP and worked quietly for many years to improve the lot of African-Americans in the segregated south. 'It was more of a relief to know that I wasn't alone.'Īfter attending Alabama State Teachers College, the young Rosa settled in Montgomery, with her husband, Raymond Parks. 'I didn't have any special fear,' she said. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down.' In the same interview, she cited her lifelong acquaintance with fear as the reason for her relative fearlessness in deciding to appeal her conviction during the bus boycott. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. Parks recalled in an interview, 'we didn't have any civil rights. The school's philosophy of self-worth was consistent with Leona McCauley's advice to 'take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were.' At the age of 11 she enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, a private school founded by liberal-minded women from the northern United States. At the age of two she moved to her grandparents' farm in Pine Level, Alabama with her mother and younger brother, Sylvester. Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama to James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a teacher.

Leona mccauley