Childhood, 1956-2004

Rosa Parks spent one night in jail for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man on December 1, 1955. She paid a fine of ten dollars plus four dollars in court costs when she was found guilty of violating Montgomery's segregated busing ordinance. Rosa didn’t know who bailed her out, but she knew whoever that did bail her out agreed with her in what she did. E. D Nixon and white supporters Clifford and Virginia Dur bailed Rosa out because he knew she was the ideal candidate to challenge the discriminatory seating policy. So Nixon asked Parks if she would be willing to make her incident a test case against segregation and she said agreed to it after speaking with her husband and mother. Rosa co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in Detroit on January 1, 1987 with Ms. Elaine Eason Steele in honor of her husband. The Institute purpose is to motivate and direct youth not targeted by other programs to achieve their highest potential. The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development’s “Pathways to Freedom program traces the underground railroad into civil rights movement and beyond. On Rosa’s 91^st birthday she thought about how she and Martin Luther King Jr. made the land free just as it always supposed to have been. They both made a big difference in the U.S and a lot of people lives. The difference they made was very difficult, but they did it anyways to prove to people that it doesn’t matter what color their skin is we are all equal.