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“So let us not grow weary in doing what is right,
for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.”
(Galatians 6:9)
Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist who refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her defiance sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Its success launched nationwide efforts to end racial segregation of public facilities. Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her parents, James and Leona McCauley, separated when Parks was two. Parks’ mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama, to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards. Both of Parks' grandparents were formerly enslaved people and strong advocates for racial equality; the family lived on the Edwards' farm, where Parks would spend her youth. Rosa Parks was a lifelong, active member of the historic African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first Black denomination founded in America by the former slave Richard Allen. It was her time in the AME church where she learned that faith required action, especially in dealing with injustice. “I learned people should stand up for their rights, just as the Children of Israel stood up to the Pharaoh,” she once commented.
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