Fourth Grade
Worksheets
Rosa Parks's Early School Years
Rosa Parks loved to learn. She was six when she started school. Rosa attended a one-room black school at a church in town. Nearly fifty students, from first grade to sixth grade, were all taught in the same room by one teacher. Rosa's school was not like the white school in town. That school was built by the city. It was a new building with glass windows and heat in the winter. Rosa's schoolhouse was very old. It was built by black people, not with tax money like the white school. It did not have glass windows. It had wooden shutters instead. On cold winter days, the wind howled through the thin boards, chilling the school and often making Rosa sick.
Rosa's school was only open for five months each year - from late fall to early spring. Many of the families at Rosa's school were sharecroppers. Rosa and her classmates needed to help their families when it was time to plant and harvest crops. They couldn't go to school when they were needed at home instead. White students, on the other hand, went to school for nine months. They received almost twice the education that African American students did!
