This is a guest post by Rachel Gordon, Visitor Services Specialist at the Library.
Rosa Parks. The name immediately brings to mind a woman who stood her ground, whose brave and principled refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus was a pivotal event in the Civil Rights Movement. On the 108th anniversary of Rosa Park’s birth, the courageous action she took and the events she precipitated remain as relevant and important as ever. There’s so much from her life story to learn and discuss – but how best to access it with children in a way that goes beyond the “lady on the bus” anecdote?
On December 1, 1955, the day of the incident on the bus, Rosa Parks was 42 years old. But what were her experiences before that? What shaped her? Her childhood provides a fascinating glimpse into how her family and upbringing formed a strong and committed activist who devoted herself to fighting against injustice for decades.
The Library’s exhibition Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words delves into Mrs. Parks’ s personal papers to document her life and activism and to give us a fuller and more intimate view of this remarkable woman.
Rosa Louise McCauley was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama and grew up under the strict segregation and injustice of the Jim Crow South. Rosa, her mother Leona, and her younger brother Sylvester lived with their maternal grandparents in Pine Level, Alabama. Her parents separated when she was very young; she didn’t see her father, James McCauley, again until she was an adult.
Rosa’s grandparents, Sylvester and Rose Edwards, were instrumental in her upbringing and the development of her character and beliefs. Her grandfather’s harsh childhood, vividly described in her autobiography, was full of brutal treatment that marked him physically and psychologically. It left him with a fierce determination to fight injustice, and to stand up for his beliefs and self-respect in any way that he could – principles he passed on to young Rosa. She writes