[4] Parks spent much of his childhood caring for ill family members and was orphaned as a teenager.

[1] Parks worked as a barber in Tuskegee, Montgomery, Maxwell Air Force Base, Hampton, Virginia, and Detroit, Michigan.

[8][9] 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.

[16][17][8] Parks encouraged his wife Rosa to finish her high school studies[18] and become active in the civil rights movement.

[5] In 2021, the Rosa and Raymond Parks Flat in Detroit (where they lived from 1961 to 1988) was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.