Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, an advocate of civil rights, was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Rosa's mother and father separated soon after her brother was born. With her father moving to the North, Rosa had very little contact with her father. Rosa's mother returned to Pine Level, Alabama to live with her parents. Her grandmother Mary Jane Nobles of African descent and grandfather James Percival McCauley of Scotch- Irish descent both died when she was very young. Rosa grew and attended the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls cleaning two classrooms in exchange to pay for her tuition. After which Rosa entered Booker T. Washington High School but dropped out after her mother became very ill. In December 1932, Rosa McCauley married Raymond Parks in Pine Level, Alabama. Rosa and her husband shared common interest in the problems of inequality and segregation in the South. In 1943, parks became one of the first women to become a member of the Montgomery Chapter of the NAACP. She served as secretary from 1943 to 1956 and as a youth advisor for several years. She ran for office with Edgar D. Nixon, for president of the NAACP, and region officer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. She joined the Montgomery Voter Leagues and encouraged blacks to vote. Parks is best known for her refusal to give up her bus seat to a white passenger on a crowded Montgomery bus. Parks refusal to give up her seat on that bus was the beginning of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Rosa Parks continues to make speeches across the country to young people and active in several corporations in which she established herself.