After Miss White's industrial School for girls closed in 1928, Rosa Parks began attending Booker T. Washington Junior High School. After Junior High School she attended the Laboratory School at Alabama State Teachers College for Negros, later to become Alabama State University (Greenhaw, 2007). Rosa Parks dream of becoming a schoolteacher was stopped short when her grandmother became ill. After Rosa Parks' grandmother died she returned to Montgomery and began working in a textile factory making men's clothing. In 1932, when Rosa Parks was just nineteen she met and married the twenty-nine year old barber, Raymond Parks. Both Rosa and Raymond Parks shared the common interest on focusing on common issues that African Americans had been facing. Some issues they both focused on were voting rights, school segregation, bathroom rights, and segregation of buses (Greenhaw, 2007). Rosa Parks was encouraged by many throughout her childhood and young adult life to stand up for the rights of African Americans and so became an activist. .
Rosa Parks came from a family that had a long tradition of civil rights activism and this shaped the courageous mind of Rosa Parks to stand up for what she believed in. In December of 1955 at forty-two years old, Rosa Parks made history and created the protest that progressed the civil rights movement. On a very cold December day, Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama after a long day of work in a textile factory. Rosa Parks paid her bus fair and went to sit in the first seat of the colored section of the bus. The bus was particularly full on this cold evening. At the next stop, a few white passengers boarded the bus and filled all the seats in the rows in front of Rosa Parks. One white man remained standing. The bus driver asked Rosa Parks to move so the white passenger would be able to sit. Rosa Parks refused. The Bus driver stopped the bus, called the police, and Rosa Parks was arrested (Sanders, 2006).
