Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. She moved with her parents, James and Leona McCauley, to Pine Level, Alabama, at age 2 to reside with Leona’s parents. Her brother, Sylvester, was born in 1915.

Rosa’s mother was a teacher, and the family valued education. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, at age 11 and eventually attended high school there, a laboratory school at the Alabama State Teachers’ College. She left school at 16, early in 11th grade, because she needed to care for her dying grandmother and, shortly thereafter, her chronically ill mother. In 1932, at the age of 19, she married Raymond Parks, a self-educated man 10 years her senior. He encouraged and supported Rosa in her efforts to earn her high-school diploma, which she ultimately did the following year.

Raymond and Rosa, who worked as a seamstress, became respected members of Montgomery’s large African American community. Living with white people in a city governed by “Jim Crow” (segregation) laws, however this was fraught with daily frustrations: Black people could attend only certain schools, they could drink only from specified water fountains and they could borrow books only from the “Black” library, among other restrictions.

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