Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks Dies at 92

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Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks Dies at 92

By BREE FOWLER, Associated Press Writer

 

 

 

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 (news, bio, voting record), 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 the Detroit office of Democratic

U.S. Rep. John Conyers from 1965 until retiring in 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, Reed, her attorney, said Mrs. Parks " 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. "

 

 

 

 

 

 

" When the power of love becomes stronger than the love of power, we will have

peace. "

Jimi Hendrix