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Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks holds the hand
of a well-wisher at a ceremony honoring the 46th anniversary of her
arrest for civil disobedience Saturday, Dec. 1, 2001, at the Henry
Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. Parks, whose refusal to give up her
bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement,
died Monday Oct. 24, 2005. She was
92. |
Rosa Lee Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man
sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday. She was 92.
Mrs. Parks died at her home of natural causes,
said Karen Morgan, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.
Mrs. Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that
was to change the course of American history and earn her the title
"mother of the civil rights movement."
At that time, Jim Crow laws in place since the post-Civil War
Reconstruction required separation of the races in buses, restaurants and
public accommodations throughout the South, while legally sanctioned
racial discrimination kept blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in
the North.
The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress, an active member of the local chapter
of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was
riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat.
Mrs. Parks refused, despite rules requiring blacks to yield their seats
to whites. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year
on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.
Speaking in 1992, she said history too often maintains "that my feet
were hurting and I didn't know why I refused to stand up when they told
me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a
right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of
treatment for too long."
Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a
then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who
later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
"At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this,"
Mrs. Parks said 30 years later. "It was just a day like any other day. The
only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people
joined in."
The Montgomery bus boycott, which came one year after the U.S. Supreme
Court's landmark declaration that separate schools for blacks and whites
were "inherently unequal," marked the start of the modern civil rights
movement.
The movement culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, which
banned racial discrimination in public accommodations.
After taking her public stand for civil rights, Mrs. Parks had trouble
finding work in Alabama. Amid threats and harassment, she and her husband
Raymond moved to Detroit in 1957. She worked as an aide in Conyers'
Detroit office from 1965 until retiring Sept. 30, 1988. Raymond Parks died
in 1977.
Mrs. Parks became a revered figure in Detroit,
where a street and middle school were named for her and a papier-mache
likeness of her was
featured in the city's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Mrs. Parks said upon retiring from her job with Conyers that she wanted
to devote more time to the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self
Development. The institute, incorporated in 1987, is devoted to developing
leadership among Detroit's young people and initiating them into the
struggle for civil rights.
"Rosa Parks: My Story" was published in February 1992. In 1994 she
brought out "Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope and the Heart of a Woman
Who Changed a Nation," and in 1996 a collection of letters called "Dear
Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today's Youth."
She was among the civil rights leaders who addressed the Million Man
March in October 1995.
In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to
civilians making outstanding contributions to American life. In 1999, she
was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian
honor.
Mrs. Parks received dozens of other awards, ranging from induction into
the Alabama Academy of Honor to an NAACP Image Award for her 1999
appearance on CBS' "Touched by an Angel."
The Rosa Parks Library and Museum opened in November 2000 in
Montgomery. The museum features a 1955-era bus and a video that recreates
the conversation that preceded Parks' arrest.
"Are you going to stand up?" the bus driver asked.
"No," Parks answered.
"Well, by God, I'm going to have you arrested," the driver said.
"You may do that," Parks responded.
Mrs. Parks' later years were not without difficult moments.
In 1994, Mrs. Parks' home was invaded by a 28-year-old man who beat her
and took $53. She was treated at a hospital and released. The man, Joseph
Skipper, pleaded guilty, blaming the crime on his drug problem.
The Parks Institute struggled financially since its inception. The
charity's principal activity — the annual Pathways to Freedom bus tour
taking students to the sites of key events in the civil rights movement —
routinely cost more money than the institute could raise.
Mrs. Parks lost a 1999 lawsuit that sought to prevent the hip-hop duo
OutKast from using her name as the title of a Grammy-nominated song. In
2000, she threatened legal action against an Oklahoma man who planned to
auction Internet domain name rights to http://www.rosaparks.com.
After losing the OutKast lawsuit, attorney Gregory Reed, who
represented Mrs. Parks, said his client "has once again suffered the pains
of exploitation." A later suit against OutKast's record company was
settled out of court.
She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala.
Family illness interrupted her high school education, but after she
married Raymond Parks in 1932, he encouraged her and she earned a diploma
in 1934. He also inspired her to become involved in the NAACP.
Looking back in 1988, Mrs. Parks said she worried that black young
people took legal equality for granted.
Older blacks, she said "have tried to shield young people from what we
have suffered. And in so doing, we seem to have a more complacent
attitude.
"We must double and redouble our efforts to try to say to our youth, to
try to give them an inspiration, an incentive and the will to study our
heritage and to know what it means to be black in America today."
At a celebration in her honor that same year, she said: "I am leaving
this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and
a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will
perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die — the dream
of freedom and peace."
(Agencies) |