| 
  
 
 |  |  
 | 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) |