With one simple, quiet and powerful act of protest, Rosa Parks changed the nation forever. Ever since that day in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, she has been beloved and a symbol of the fight for equality. Yet few know what the woman herself was really like. Rosa politely declined to provide much insight during her life, but now her family is sharing stories of “Auntie Rosa” for the first time.

In the memoir, Our Auntie Rosa, Parks’ niece Sheila McCauley Keys shares her memories of her father’s sister, Rosa.

Sheila looks back on her aunt’s extraordinary life with the Growing Bolder Radio Show and describes how she never even knew until fourth grade that her “Auntie Rosa” was THE Rosa Parks until she saw it in a history book at school.

Did Rosa plan her famous bus protest or did it just happen? Sheila shares what she thinks her auntie was thinking about that day.