Rosa Parks, a well-known advocate for civil rights in the United States, was born to parents James McCauley and Leona Edwards McCauley.
Rosa Parks, born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama, started her activism by supporting the wrongly accused Scottsboro Boys, African American teenagers in the early 1930s.
In 1943, she joined the Montgomery division of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and served as secretary to local leader Edgar Nixon for 14 years.
During this time, she used her role to fight against sexual assaults on black women.
Parks is most recognized for her defiance in 1955 when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.
This act sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and catalyzed the civil rights movement. Her activism extended beyond racial segregation. After moving to Detroit in 1957, she fought for women’s equality.
She co-founded the Rosa L. Parks Scholarship Foundation in 1980 and the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development in 1987 as part of her philanthropic efforts.
Parks received numerous awards acknowledging her monumental impact, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.Â
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Rosa Parks Parents: Father James McCauley & Mother Leona
Rosa Parks was born to James McCauley and Leona Edwards McCauley as their first child. She had a younger brother named Sylvester McCauley, born on August 20, 1915.
James McCauley, Rosa Parks’ father, was the eldest son of Anderson and Louisa McCauley. He was born in Abbeville, Alabama, and followed in his father’s footsteps to become a skilled carpenter and stonemason.Â
James met Leona Edwards while visiting his sister Addie in Pine Level, Alabama. They married on April 12, 1912, at Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Pine Level.
Leona Edwards, Rosa Parks’ mother, was the youngest of Sylvester and Rose Edwards’s three daughters.
She was born in Pine Level, Alabama, and attended Payne University in Selma, although she did not earn a degree.Â
Despite this, Leona became a dedicated rural school teacher, and her meager salary was the main source of the family’s income.
She instilled in Rosa Parks the importance of faith, self-respect, and education—values reinforced by her grandparents and the teachers at Miss White’s School, a school that Rosa Parks would attend at age eleven.
For much of her childhood, Rosa Parks was educated at home by her mother, who also worked as a teacher at a nearby school.
Rosa Parks Ethnicity: Where Is She From?
Rosa Parks, a pivotal figure in the American civil rights movement, was born into a family with diverse ethnic roots.
Her ancestry was primarily African-American but included smaller amounts of English and Irish heritage.
Her paternal grandfather, Anderson McCauley, was born in Georgia. He was the son of Ghiogee, a Creek Indian, and Charles McCauley, a soldier of Irish and Cherokee descent.
Anderson McCauley later moved to Alabama, where he married Rosa Parks’ paternal grandmother, Louisa Collins.
Louisa Collins was also born in Georgia, the daughter of a mixed-race slave. She married Anderson McCauley, who was of mixed-race Georgian descent.
On her mother’s side, Rosa Parks had a great-great-grandfather who was Irish and a great-grandfather on another line who was likely white.
Additionally, one of Rosa Parks’ great-grandfathers was Scots-Irish, and one of her great-grandmothers was a part–Native American slave.
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