Tuskegee is a city in Macon County, Alabama, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 11,846 and is designated a Micropolitan Statistical Area. Tuskegee has been an important site in various stages of African American history. It is where, in 1881, Booker T. Washington founded the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, which later became Tuskegee Institute and then Tuskegee University, with the mission of educating a newly freed people for self-sufficiency, and was the birthplace of Rosa Louise Parks in 1913. The town was also the site of the now-infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment, a controversial clinical study conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service from 1932-1972. Today it remains a center for African-American education and became a part of the National Parks System in 1974. One of the most famous teachers at Tuskegee was George Washington Carver, whose name is synonymous with innovative research into Southern farming method and crops. Tuskegee and Tuskegee Institute were also home to the famed Tuskegee Airmen, the first squadron of African-American pilots in the U.S. Military. The city is the county seat of Macon County, and is known as the home of Tuskegee University "The Pride of the Swift Growing South".