A claim began circulating online in early 2024 that civil rights activist Rosa Parks’ husband, Raymond Parks, had a car.
It’s unclear where the rumor originated, but it was repeated by American podcaster and rapper Joe Budden in June 2024. Clips of him making the claim have been shared widely, including a TikTok video that has about 10.5 million views and more than 1 million likes as of this writing.
This is what Budden and his co-host, Trevor “Queenzflip” Robinson, said:
BUDDEN: The internet has been in an uproar since finding out that Rosa Parks’ husband had a car.
ROBINSON: Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Rosa Parks is a plant?
Many commenters believed that the rumor discredited Parks, who was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man on Dec. 1, 1955, sparking the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycotts, a 13-month protest against racial segregation on public transit.
“Rosa Parks’ husband had a car and she took the bus just to be messy,” one Threads user wrote .