History News Network

Rosa Parks

Originally published 12/11/2017
Before the Bus, Rosa Parks Was a Sexual Assault Investigator

The women standing up today are in fact part of a long history of activists fighting sexual harassment.

Originally published 09/04/2017
Rosa Parks House in Berlin Has a Ticket Home to America

In a backyard in Berlin, a ramshackle house that was once a haven for the civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks is preparing for its third life — back in the United States.

Originally published 05/04/2017
Saved From Demolition, Rosa Parks’s House Gets a Second Life

After it was threatened with demolition, the house was moved to Berlin, where it was opened to the public in early April.

Originally published 10/10/2016
Detroit House Preserves Memories of a Little-Known Part of Rosa Parks’s Life

The house’s materials have been shipped to an artist in Berlin, who wants to reconstruct the house to honor Ms. Parks’s life and her extraordinary role in the civil rights movement.

Originally published 12/01/2015
You Still Don’t Know the Whole Rosa Parks Story

Yes, she was arrested on Dec. 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat—but that's not the whole story

Originally published 02/03/2015
Rosa Parks' archive opening to public at Library of Congress

Beginning Wednesday at the Library of Congress, researchers and the public will have full access to Parks' archive of letters, writings, personal notes and photographs for the first time.

Originally published 12/03/2013
Rosa Parks’s official arrest report

She refused to give bus seat to white man 58 years ago December 1.

Originally published 02/27/2013
Rosa Parks statue unveiled in U.S. Capitol

More than half a century after she refused to give up her seat on an Alabama city bus, Rosa Parks has an immovable place in the U.S. Capitol — the first black woman to be honored with a statue there.President Barack Obama and congressional leaders from both parties said at an unveiling Wednesday that the depiction was fitting: Parks is shown seated, hands clasped in front of her, eyes fixed forward.“Rosa Parks’ singular act of disobedience launched a movement,” Obama said. “The tired feet of those who walked the dusty roads of Montgomery helped a nation see that to which it had once been blind.”...

Originally published 02/27/2013
Rosa Parks statue unveiled at Capitol

President Barack Obama says civil rights icon Rosa Parks has taken her rightful place among those who have shaped the course of U.S. history.Obama and House Speaker John Boehner unveiled a statue of Parks in a ceremony at the Capitol. Parks becomes the first black woman to be honored with a full-length statue in the Capitol's Statuary Hall.A bust of another black woman, abolitionist Sojourner Truth, sits in the Capitol Visitors Center.Obama says the nation learned from Parks that there is always something we can do to improve the future...

Originally published 02/04/2013
Postal Service honors Rosa Parks with new stamp

Hundreds of people, including some of Michigan's political elite, gathered Monday to celebrate the late Rosa Parks on what would have been her 100th birthday by unveiling a postage stamp in her honor steps from the Alabama bus on which she stared down segregation nearly 60 years ago.Parks, who died in 2005, became one of the enduring figures of the Civil Rights movement when she refused to cede her seat in the colored section of the Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white man after the whites-only section filled up. Her defiance and the ensuing black boycott of the city bus system helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rise to national prominence...The Parks stamp is the second in a set of civil rights stamps being issued this year by the U.S. Postal Service.USPS launched the series Jan. 1 with the Emancipation Proclamation Forever Stamp, which was issued at The National Archives in Washington. In August, the series will culminate with the dedication of a stamp recognizing the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington...