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 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."
By Linda Chavez
Oct 26, 2005
President Center for Equal Opportunity
Few people in history can claim to have truly changed the world, and even fewer by one simple act. But Rosa Parks, who died this week at 92, did just that. On Dec. 1, 1955, she boarded a bus in Montgomery, Ala., and helped launch a revolution against bigotry and ignorance by refusing to yield her seat to a white man. She later said she was tired -- not physically so much as weary of putting up with second-class citizenship in a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal. Mrs. Parks' defiance was one more nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, and the United States would never be the same.
It is almost unfathomable that barely 50 years ago it was illegal in many parts of the country for blacks to sit in the front of public buses, or eat at lunch counters or drink from the same water fountains as whites. Rosa Parks' protest inspired thousands of others to engage in civil disobedience against such tyranny. Soon, blacks and whites, Christians and Jews, old and young were taking to the streets to march against injustice and demand that this nation live up to its ideals. But the modern civil rights movement began with the Montgomery bus boycott sparked by Rosa Parks.
The official penalty imposed on blacks for failing to give up their seats was a fine of $10, a substantial sum for those who could be, and were, paid less than whites -- when they weren't being denied jobs altogether. But blacks who defied the white power structure could face far worse penalties, even death. Just months before Mrs. Parks' refusal to move to the back of the bus in Alabama, young Emmett Till was lynched by a mob of white men in Mississippi. The 14-year-old's "crime" was allegedly whistling at a white girl outside a country store. An all white jury later acquitted the only two men ever prosecuted for Till's killing, although one of the men later admitted to being part of the lynch mob in a shocking expose published by Look magazine.
The day that Rosa Parks went to court to be tried for violating Montgomery's bus ordinance, 40,000 black Montgomery residents refused to ride the bus, sparking a boycott that lasted more than a year. The boycott, which established the reputation of a young black minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., only ended when the Supreme Court handed down a decision outlawing segregation on public buses.
It took another decade before Congress acted to make racial discrimination illegal, first with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which barred discrimination in public accommodations, employment and programs that receive federal funds. In 1965, Congress prohibited discrimination in voting, making it possible for blacks in many Southern states to vote for the first time. And in 1968, Congress outlawed discrimination in housing. But in many ways, it was Rosa Parks' courage that set these events in motion.
Mrs. Parks did not remain in Alabama, moving north as so many blacks did in the '50s and '60s. She continued to work as a seamstress, later joining the Detroit office of Rep. John Conyers. In the 1990s, President Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Congress bestowed its Congressional Gold Medal. She rarely sought the limelight and wore the mantle of fame reluctantly. In her later years, she even became the victim of a vicious crime by a 28-year-old black man who broke into her apartment, beat her badly and stole $53, having no idea who she was.
But for many people -- black and white -- Rosa Parks was a hero. Her quiet dignity and strength inspired others to stand up for what they knew was right. America is a better place for Rosa Parks. She will be missed by all who value freedom.
10-25-2005, 00:32
Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks Dies at 92 
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