seating policies with separate sections for Blacks and Whites. School bus transportation was unavailable in any form for Black schoolchildren in the South, and Black education was always underfunded. Parks recalled going to elementary school in Pine Level, where school buses took White students to their new school and Black students had to walk to theirs: I'd see the bus pass every day ... But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a Black world and a White world. Although Parks's autobiography recounts early memories of the kindness of White strangers, she could not ignore the racism of her society. When the Ku Klux Klan marched down the street in front of their house, Parks recalls her grandfather guarding the front door with a shotgun. The Montgomery Industrial School, founded and staffed by White northerners for Black children, was burned twice by arsonists. Its faculty was ostracized by the White community. Repeatedly bullied by White children in her neighborhood, Parks often fought back physically. She later said: "As far back as I remember, I could never think in terms of accepting physical abuse without some form of retaliation if possible." Early activism In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, a barber from Montgomery. He was a member of the NAACP, which at the time was collecting money to support the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, a group of Black men falsely accused of raping two White women. Rosa took numerous jobs, ranging from domestic worker to hospital aide. At her husband's urging, she finished her high school studies in 1933, at a time when fewer than 7% of African Americans had a high-school diploma. In December 1943, Parks became active in the civil rights movement, joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, and was elected secretary at a time when this was considered a woman's job. She later said, "I was the only woman there, and they needed a secretary, and I was too timid to say no." She continued as secretary until 1957. She worked for the local NAACP leader Edgar Nixon, even though he maintained that "Women don't need to be nowhere but in the kitchen." When Parks asked, "Well, what about me?", he replied: "I need a secretary and you are a good one." In