Dorothy Parks

Dorothy Parks was a Pennsylvania-born woman who came of age during the Great Migration and whose life intersected education, civic engagement, and military service. She first appears in the public record in Kansas City, Missouri in 1939, suggesting early mobility and family or community connections in the Midwest.

By 1941–1942, Parks was a student within the Atlanta University Center community and became a charter member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.’s Gamma Gamma Chapter, installed at Morris Brown College on January 5, 1942. 

Before military service, Parks participated in the YWCA Business Girls Council (Junior Division), a civic and professional leadership group for young Black women in Atlanta.

During World War II, Parks served as a Corporal in the Women’s Army Corps, stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. She appears in an April 1944 newspaper notice describing her as on furlough and convalescing from illness, and she is noted as a guest of respected Atlanta families including Dr. and Mrs. A. H. Porter.