24th Annual, California Rosa Parks Day - Transit Equity - Press Conference

11:30 am, Monday, February 5, 2024
California Rosa Parks Day - Transit Equity
Sacramento Regional Transit - Historic Ole Blue "Rosa Parks Bus"
Highlighting the Women "Hidden Figures" of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

(Sacramento, California) Together, we honor the living legacy of Auntie Rosie on her birthday.

Mrs. Rosa Parks, will forever be the Patron Saint of the Women's Political Council of Montgomery, Alabama as we share the "hidden figures" who long planned the Montgomery Bus Boycott to desegregate separate and unequal public accommodations in the "Heart of Dixie."

On February 4, 1913, Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama to parents James McCauley and Leona Edwards. Her father was employed as a carpenter and her mother as a teacher. In her younger years Rosa was sick much of the time, and as a result, was a small, homeschooled child. Her parents separated, and her mother moved Rosa and her younger brother Sylvester to Pine Level, Alabama, a rural agriculture town adjacent to Montgomery, Alabama. Rosa spent the early years of her childhood on her grandparents’ family farm.

Her early childhood experiences helped her to develop a strong spirt and set deep roots in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Rosa did not attend a public school until the age of eleven, when she attended the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery, where she excelled in vocational and academic courses. Young Rosa began laboratory school for her secondary education, but never completed the coursework because she was forced to drop out to care for her ailing Grandmother.

Rosa’s childhood was greatly influenced by the Jim Crow laws of the South, which segregated white people from black people in almost every part of their daily lives. This included public restrooms, drinking fountains, education and transportation. For the children attending school, there was busing for the white children to their school, but the black children were required to walk to school.

Public transportation throughout the Deep South and much of America followed this line of racial segregation where "Colored" people were allowed on the bus to pay their fair, exit the bus and sit in the back "Colored Section" separated from reserved "White only" front seating.

Today, we celebrate the oldest known official Rosa Parks Day established by the California State Legislature on February 4, 2000 and remember "hidden figures" from the Women's Political Council of Montgomery, Alabama who first began the journey towards Transit Equity.