Civil rights & activism / City history
Rosa Parks
1913–2005 · civil rights activist
The Montgomery bus-boycott icon who lived in Detroit for nearly fifty years, worked for Congressman John Conyers and is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery.
- Born
Tuskegee, Alabama- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 92- Birth name
- Rosa Louise McCauley
- Also known as
- Mother of the civil rights movement
- Detroit years
- 1957–2005
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
After her 1955 arrest in Montgomery, Alabama, and the year-long boycott it sparked, Rosa Parks faced threats and could not find steady work. In August 1957 she moved to Detroit, where her brother Sylvester already lived, and she stayed for the rest of her life. The family first lodged with a cousin, then rented on Euclid Avenue, and in 1961 settled in a flat on Virginia Park Street. From 1965 to 1988 she worked in the Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers, handling constituents' problems. She remained active in local causes, from defense committees for political prisoners to the NAACP's Detroit branch, and in 1987 co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. The city renamed 12th Street as Rosa Parks Boulevard in 1976. When she died in 2005, she lay in repose at the Charles H. Wright Museum and was entombed at Woodlawn Cemetery.
Highlights
- Refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955
- Lived in Detroit from 1957 until her death in 2005
- Worked on Congressman John Conyers's Detroit staff, 1965–1988
- Presidential Medal of Freedom (1996) and Congressional Gold Medal (1999)
- Detroit's 12th Street became Rosa Parks Boulevard in 1976
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 7
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Buried here · 2005
Woodlawn Cemetery (Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel)
She was entombed in the cemetery's mausoleum chapel, renamed in her honor, next to her husband Raymond and her mother.
Memorial · 2005
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
Her casket lay in repose in the museum's rotunda before the funeral, drawing tens of thousands of mourners.
Related place · 2005
Greater Grace Temple
Site of her seven-hour funeral on November 2, 2005.
Memorial · 1976–
Rosa Parks Boulevard
The former 12th Street, renamed for her in 1976 at the urging of her friend Louise Tappes.
Memorial · 2009–
Rosa Parks Transit Center
Downtown bus hub at Cass and Michigan avenues, named for her when it opened in 2009.
Memorial · 2003–
Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation
The museum displays the restored Montgomery city bus on which she was arrested in 1955.
Lived here · 1961–1990s
Virginia Park home
Status being checked
The family's flat on Virginia Park Street, their home for decades after 1961.