Raymond Parks (activist)
Raymond Arthur Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement and barber, best known as the husband of Rosa Parks. His wife called him "the first real activist I ever met.”
Life and work
Parks was born in 1903 in Wedowee, Alabama, the son of David Parks and Geri Culbertson. He did not receive a formal education as there was no nearby black school where he lived. He taught himself to read with the help of his mother and had an appreciation for poetry. Parks spent much of his childhood caring for ill family members and was orphaned as a teenager.Parks worked as a barber in Tuskegee, Montgomery, Maxwell Air Force Base, Hampton, Virginia, and Detroit, Michigan.
Civil rights activism
Parks was politically active, a member of the League of Women Voters, and active member of the NAACP. He was involved in leading the national pledge drive in support of the legal defense of the Scottsboro Boys, a group of nine young Black men falsely accused of raping two White women. Parks was also a charter member of the Montgomery NAACP and was heavily involved in the Montgomery labor rights movement, supporting efforts to unionize day laborers in the city.Due to his wife's notable involvement in the Montgomery bus boycott, Parks lost his job as a barber at Maxwell Air Force Base after his boss forbade him to talk about his wife or the legal case.