workingclasshistory:

On this day, 4 February 1913, legendary civil activist Rosa Parks was born. While many histories of her life depict her as a “quiet” woman who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus to a white passenger because she was “tired”, Parks was a lifelong, committed militant in the struggle for a better world.
As a 6-year-old, she would sit with her grandfather who had armed himself with a shotgun to protect their family home from the KKK. Later on in her youth she armed herself with a brick to confront a white bully, and she described Malcolm X as her personal hero.
Most famous for triggering the Montgomery bus boycott, she was involved in too many campaigns to mention, like supporting Joan Little, a Black woman who killed a white prison guard who sexually assaulted her, supporting women’s reproductive freedom and taking part in the Black power movement in Detroit alongside the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) and others.
As Parks herself once said: “Freedom fighters never retire". And she never did, until her death in 2005.
Our podcast episodes 61-62 are about the LRBW: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/08/28/e12-the-league-of-revolutionary-black-workers-in-detroit/ https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/2202219466629858/?type=3