It all started with Rosa Parks’ grandfather
Mia Phillips
Updated on April 03, 2026
Rosa Parks is universally heralded as an icon of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. While Parks was inspired by her peers and local NAACP branch, it was really her grandfather who ignited her activism.
Rosa Louise Parks (née McCauley) was born on February 4th, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. She was the only daughter of Leona and James McCauley, a teacher and a carpenter respectively. Leona and James McCauley also had a son, Rosa’s younger brother, Sylvester.
When Rosa Parks was just a child, her parents separated. Her mother, Leona, decided to move the family to rural Pine Level, where her parents lived. Pine Level was just outside of Alabama’s state capital, Montgomery. The area was heavily affected by the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1900s. Rosa Parks recalled: “By the time I was six, I was old enough to realise that we were not actually free. The Ku Klux Klan was riding through the black community, burning churches, beating up people, killing people.”
This violent white supremacy was present in Rosa Parks’ life from an early age. One of Parks’ memories of growing up with her grandparents in Pine Level was of her grandfather, Sylvester Edwards, sleeping armed with a double-barrelled shotgun. Edwards would sleep in a rocking chair by the front door, in case the family was attacked by any Klansmen in the night.
Sylvester Edwards was all too familiar with growing up in this violent environment. He was the son of white plantation owner John Edwards and Edwards’ enslaved housekeeper and seamstress. When Sylvester was born, he was born into slavery under his father and subjected to violence throughout his childhood. Rosa Parks recalled her grandfather’s mistreatment as a child: The plantation’s overseer “tried to starve him, wouldn’t let him have any shoes.”
Slavery was abolished through the signing of the 13th Amendment (1865) and the end of the American Civil War. What followed was an era known as Reconstruction (1865 to 1877). Reconstruction sought to rebuild the United States following the Civil War and redress the inequities – economic, social, political – of slavery. During Reconstruction, Sylvester and his wife Rose (both were enslaved by John Edwards) inherited eighteen acres of farm land through Rose’s grandfather James Percival. They hoped to restart their lives as newly freed Americans. Sylvester and Rose Edwards kept the land as a farm, which they proceeded to live off of.
Despite his newfound freedom, the horrors of Sylvester Edwards’ childhood stayed with him for the rest of his life. Rosa Parks noted that her grandfather’s childhood mistreatment at the hands of white people developed into a “very intense, passionate hatred for white people” in general. Not without a sense of humour, Parks added that her grandfather “liked to laugh at whites behind their backs.” Sylvester Edwards defied racist social norms of the time, shaking hands with white people and introducing himself as “Edwards” to agitate them.
As the historian Douglas Brinkley notes in the biography, Rosa Parks:
“Watching her grandfather flout society’s race rules gave Rosa McCauley [Parks] her first taste of overt civil disobedience against discrimination.”
Sylvester Edwards instilled in his grandchildren the importance of standing up for yourself in the face of injustice. An autobiographical account from Rosa Parks’ childhood reveals that she fought off a young white boy named Franklin, who threatened to hit her. Aged 10, a fearless Rosa picked up a brick to defend herself, daring Franklin to try attack her. In this account, Rosa Parks boldly states, “I would rather be lynched than live to be mistreated.”
A defiant nature was not the only thing Edwards passed to his children and grandchildren. Sylvester Edwards was a keen learner and insisted that his daughters – Fannie, Bessie and Leona – attended school. Leona, Rosa’s mother, attended Payne University in Selma. She did not earn a degree certificate, but she did start teaching in rural Alabama schools. Rosa Parks attended a school in Pine Level before attending Miss White’s Montgomery Industrial School for Girls in Alabama’s capital.
- BHM: YouTube’s logo for Black History Month
On top of Rosa Parks’ schoolwork, her grandfather Sylvester taught her all about the works of Jamaican-born activist Marcus Garvey. Marcus Garvey was the founder and President of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. He was also responsible for organising the first Black nationalist movement in the United States. Sylvester Edwards was a fierce supporter of Garvey’s work.
Sylvester Edwards passed away on August 20th, 1923 in Montgomery, Alabama. But Rosa Parks carried her grandfather’s defiant spirit throughout the rest of her life. This famously culminated in her arrest on December 1st, 1955.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955 to 1956) is widely regarded as one of the most important events of the Civil Rights Movement. The 13-month long boycott proved that non-violent mass protest could result in legislative change. The Bus Boycott ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional.
Rosa Parks had many figures around her involved in Civil Rights activism: her husband Raymond Parks was an activist; Rosa herself was the secretary at the Youth Division of the Montgomery NAACP branch. However, the influence her grandfather Sylvester Edwards had on her activism cannot be understated.
Without Edwards’ encouragement to defy the injustices of society, Rosa Parks may have never found the courage to stand up for herself by sitting down.
