Civil rights pioneer Rosa McCauley Parks was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Shortly after her birth, her parents James and Leona McCauley moved to a 260 acre farm owned by her grandparents, Anderson and Louisa McCauley. Her father, a builder, designed and constructed the Henry County Training School for black students in 1914. After a few years in Henry County, Rosa and her mother moved to Pine Level, Alabama, to live with her maternal grandparents, while her father went north seeking new building opportunities. Rosa McCauley married Richard Parks of Pine Level in 1932. She returned to Henry County in 1944 on behalf of the NAACP to investigate the alleged rape of a young black mother by seven white youths. Rosa McCauley Parks gained national attention on December 1, 1955 when she refused to relinquish her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama public bus to a white man. Her refusal to go to the back of the bus sparked a successful bus boycott that earned Rosa McCauley Parks the title of “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement in America.” She died at her home in Detroit, Michigan, on October 24, 2005.