60 Fun Facts About Rosa Parks

By what honorific is Rosa Parks sometimes known?

Her 1955 arrest in Montgomery, Alabama, sparked the bus boycott that made her famous.

On what date was Rosa Parks arrested on the bus?

She had left work at 5 p.m., stopped at a drugstore and boarded around 5:30 without noticing who was driving.

How long did the Montgomery bus boycott last?

It ended on December 20, 1956, the day the Supreme Court ordered the buses integrated.

In which Alabama town was Rosa Parks born in 1913?

She was named Rosa Louise after her two grandmothers, Rose and Louisa.

What was Rosa Parks's maiden name?

Her mother Leona was a teacher and her father James a carpenter and mason.

How much per day were Black children paid to pick cotton where six-year-old Parks worked?

She also learned quilting and sewing, finishing her first quilt at ten and her first dress at eleven.

Which church denomination did Parks join at age two and remain in all her life?

Her Detroit memorial was held at the Metropolitan AME Church.

Rosa's future husband Raymond Parks first impressed her by owning what?

She called him the 'first real activist' she had ever met; they married in December 1932.

Which famous case did Rosa and Raymond Parks raise defence funds for soon after their marriage?

Nine Black youths had been falsely accused of raping two white women on a train and sentenced to death.

What percentage of Black people in Alabama held a high school diploma when Parks earned hers in 1933?

Raymond encouraged her to finish; she then worked as a nurse's aide and seamstress.

Working at which fully integrated military base in 1941 'opened her eyes' to an alternative to Jim Crow?

On base she rode buses beside white coworkers; on the way home she had to ride segregated ones.

What position did Parks hold in the Montgomery NAACP from December 1943?

She said she took it because 'I was the only woman there... and I was too timid to say no'.

How many attempts did it take Parks to register to vote in Alabama?

In 1940 less than 0.1 percent of Black Montgomerians were registered; she succeeded in 1945.

In her NAACP role, Parks investigated the 1944 gang rape of which Black woman from Abbeville?

The campaign for justice was called the strongest of its kind in a decade, though no one was ever indicted.

Which activist training centre in Tennessee did Parks attend in the summer of 1955?

She was mentored there by Septima Clark and remembered it as a rare time she felt no racial hostility.

Which white couple employed Parks as a seamstress and helped bail her out after her arrest?

E. D. Nixon drove to the jail with them and paid her bail.

Which bus driver had Rosa Parks arrested, having thrown her off his bus back in 1943?

She said if she had noticed him at the wheel she would not have boarded.

Which 15-year-old was arrested for refusing to give up her Montgomery bus seat nine months before Parks?

Local leaders decided she was not a suitable test case; she became a plaintiff in the federal lawsuit instead.

How old was Parks when she was arrested on the bus?

'I was not old,' she said. 'No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.'

What did Parks say when the driver threatened to have her arrested?

She thought about resisting physically but decided she had no way of fighting back.

In front of which theatre did the bus stop when the driver demanded the middle-row passengers move?

Everyone else near her complied; she stayed seated.

Which organisation produced 35,000 leaflets calling for a one-day boycott on the day of Parks's trial?

President Jo Ann Robinson ran them off on a college mimeograph under the guise of grading exams.

Which young pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was elected to lead the boycott organisation?

The Montgomery Improvement Association was formed on the afternoon of Parks's trial.

How much was Parks fined at her trial, plus $4 in court fees?

The trial took between five and thirty minutes and her lawyer Fred Gray immediately appealed.

Roughly how many attended the Holt Street Baptist Church mass meeting the evening of Parks's trial?

The crowd called for Parks to speak, but she was told she had 'said enough' and did not.

What temporary role did Parks take in the boycott's car-pool system?

She was fired from her seamstress job at Montgomery Fair in January 1956, and Raymond lost his a week later.

Which Supreme Court case ended segregation on Montgomery's buses?

Parks was removed as a plaintiff so her own state case could not be used to get the federal suit dismissed.

To which state did Parks move in 1957, after threats and financial hardship in Montgomery?

Her brother Sylvester lived there; the MIA, embarrassed, raised $500 as a going-away present.

Which congressman hired Parks to work in his Detroit office after his 1964 election?

She had persuaded King to appear with the novice candidate, boosting his campaign.

How did Parks later describe the 1963 March on Washington?

No women were included in the delegation sent to meet the Kennedy administration.

Parks admired and befriended which advocate of 'armed self defense' after his return from China?

She was also an admirer of Malcolm X and later attended Black power conferences.

Which activist did Rosa Parks introduce to 12,000 people as a 'dear sister who has endured significant persecution'?

Davis had been acquitted in the kidnapping and murder case of Judge Harold Haley.

Of what did Raymond Parks die in 1977?

Her brother Sylvester died of stomach cancer soon after, and she gradually withdrew from activism.

With whom did Parks co-found the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in 1987?

The institute runs 'Pathways to Freedom' bus tours of civil rights and Underground Railroad sites.

Whose release did Parks call for in a speech at her 1990 birthday gala in Washington?

She had marched with the Free South Africa Movement against apartheid throughout the 1980s.

How much money did an intruder take from the 81-year-old Parks when he assaulted her at home in 1994?

She urged people not to read too much into the attack and expressed compassion for her assailant.

Which pizza-chain founder offered to pay Parks's housing costs indefinitely after the 1994 assault?

Funds were regularly deposited into a trust on her behalf.

Which president awarded Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996?

In 1999 she also received the Congressional Gold Medal.

Which hip-hop duo did Parks sue in 1999 for using her name as a song title?

The song appeared on the 1998 album Aquemini; a settlement was reached in 2005.

Which museum has displayed the bus on which Parks refused to move since 2003?

It was restored with Save America's Treasures funding and went on show in Dearborn, Michigan, in 2003.

After her death in 2005, Parks became only the second private citizen to do what?

About 40,000 mourners filed past; she was the 31st person overall so honoured.

Which singer performed at Parks's memorial service in Detroit?

Bill and Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama attended.

Parks was the first Black American honoured with a statue in which part of the US Capitol?

It was unveiled in 2013 with President Obama and Speaker Boehner present.

What did an American artist do with Parks's threatened Detroit house in 2016?

Ryan Mendoza brought it back to the US in 2018, where it was shown in Providence, Rhode Island.

Which actress played Parks in the 2002 biopic The Rosa Parks Story?

Vinette Robinson later played her in a 2018 episode of Doctor Who.

What is named 284996 Rosaparks?

It was discovered in 2010 by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.

Rosa Parks's first name was a portmanteau of the names of which two relatives?

Rose and Louisa gave her 'Rosa Louise'; her mother Leona was a teacher from Pine Level and her father a carpenter from Abbeville.

Seeing a photograph of which former classmate prompted Parks to start attending NAACP meetings in 1943?

By December that year she had been elected the Montgomery chapter's secretary.

In 1940, what share of Black Montgomerians were registered to vote?

Poll taxes, literacy tests and employer retaliation stood in the way; Parks finally registered in 1945 after three attempts.

Which NAACP activist urged Parks to register to vote and later pushed to make her arrest a test case?

He and Clifford Durr favoured Parks for her high standing, respectable manners and 'firm quiet spirit'.

Where did Parks buy several items before walking to Court Square to catch the bus on December 1, 1955?

Lost in thought, she did not notice the driver was James F. Blake; she later said she would not have boarded if she had.

Which chronic condition was causing Parks significant shoulder discomfort as she sat on the bus that evening?

She sat in the middle section next to a Black man and across from two Black women.

Roughly how long did Parks's trial last?

Fred Gray immediately filed an appeal while E. D. Nixon addressed the crowd outside.

In late 1957, Parks briefly left Detroit to work as a hostess at the Holly Tree Inn in which city?

She returned to Detroit that December; by 1959 the family had lost their apartment and moved into a meeting hall.

Which Detroit thoroughfare was renamed Rosa Parks Boulevard in 1976?

The renaming came at the behest of her friend Louise Tappes; Michigan later designated February 4 as Rosa Parks Day.

Which secretary of state said at Parks's funeral that without her 'I probably would not be standing here'?

Detroit and Montgomery reserved the front seats of their buses with black ribbons until the funeral.

Which two sculptors made the Rosa Parks statue unveiled in the US Capitol in 2013?

Their design, depicting Parks on the day of her arrest, won a competition with entries from 150 artists.

In which European capital did a station named after Rosa Parks open in 2015?

A statue was dedicated in Newark, New Jersey, the year before.

Who played Rosa Parks in the 2018 Doctor Who episode 'Rosa'?

Commenters largely agreed the writers 'hadn't undermined the legacy of Rosa Parks'.

In 2019, Mattel released a doll in Parks's likeness as part of which Barbie series?

Forty years earlier she had appeared as card no. 27 in the 1979 Supersisters trading card set.