Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913 . Rosa was called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement".Her birthday, February 4, and the day she was arrested December 1, have both become Rosa Parks Day .
She was of African,Cherokee-Cree and Scots-Irish ancestry. She was a small child suffering from poor health with chronic tonsillitis. When her parents separated, she moved with her mother to Pine Level. She grew up on a farm with her maternal grandparents, mother, and younger brother Sylvester. They all were members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a century-old independent black denomination founded by free blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early nineteenth century.
Rosa attended rural schools until the age of eleven. A student at the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery, she took academic and vocational courses. Parks went to a laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes for secondary education, but dropped out to take care of her grandmother and later her mother, after they became ill.
She was of African,Cherokee-Cree and Scots-Irish ancestry. She was a small child suffering from poor health with chronic tonsillitis. When her parents separated, she moved with her mother to Pine Level. She grew up on a farm with her maternal grandparents, mother, and younger brother Sylvester. They all were members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a century-old independent black denomination founded by free blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early nineteenth century.
Rosa attended rural schools until the age of eleven. A student at the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery, she took academic and vocational courses. Parks went to a laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes for secondary education, but dropped out to take care of her grandmother and later her mother, after they became ill.