| October 25th, 2005 05:03 AM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Rosa Parks is dead at age 92
Hero who inspired Ala. bus boycott
BY LEO STANDORA
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
The mother of America's civil rights movement died last night. Rosa Lee Parks, who inspired an entire race to stand up for its rights by refusing in 1955 to give up her bus seat to a white man in Alabama, was 92.
"She just fell asleep and didn't wake up," said Shirley Kaigler, Parks' lawyer. She said Parks died surrounded by a small group of friends and family members at her Detroit home.
New York civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton called for a national day of mourning.
"She was a historic American figure who literally opened up America for all citizens," he told the Daily News.
"I call on President Bush to fly flags at half-mast to memorialize the woman who made America a greater and better place."
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem) said, "There is a little bit of Rosa Parks in all of us.
"America was ready to reject the racism and terrorism that existed in the South," Rangel said of her brave refusal to move.
"Her standing up and refusing to go to the back of the bus helped us recognize how wrong it was to have segregation in this country. She sparked the conscience of America."
Parks, a mild-mannered daughter of a teacher and a carpenter, was 42 when she committed the act of defiance that changed the course of American history and earned her the title of "midwife" or "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 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.
Parks refused and she was jailed and later fined $14.
But her one-woman act of defiance inspired 50,000 blacks inMontgomery to join in a historic 381-day boycott, organized then by a little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
So they walked, finally refusing to endure their daily humiliation on the city's buses.
Parks' bravery became the catalyst for a movement that broke the back of legalized segregation in the U.S.
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."
"At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this," Parks said in 1992. "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 1956 Montgomery bus boycott, which came two years after the Supreme Court's landmark declaration that separate schools for blacks and whites were "inherently unequal," marked the start of the modern civil rights movement.
It culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations.
Still, after taking her public stand for civil rights, 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 to Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) from 1965 until retiring in 1988. Raymond Parks died in 1977.
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, which she founded in 1987 to develop young leaders.
She worried that young people take legal equality for granted and said that older blacks "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," she said.
Parks' health had been declining for the past 10 years. She was said to be suffering dementia and had stopped making public appearances.
In one of her last lengthy interviews, she spoke to the Detroit Free Press in 1995 about what she would like people to say about her after she passed away.
She said the love of freedom was instilled in her from childhood by her grandfather - her mother's father with whom she lived when she was growing up.
He taught his children and grandchildren not to put up with mistreatment.
"It was passed down almost in our genes," Parks wrote in her 1992 autobiography, "My Story."
She recalled that when her grandfather was home, he kept a shotgun by his side in case the Ku Klux Klan dropped by.
"I'd like people to say I'm a person who always wanted to be free and wanted it not only for myself; freedom is for all human beings," she told the Free Press.
With Kerry Burke and News Wire Services
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
| October 25th, 2005 05:34 AM |
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| Voodoo Scrounge |
RIP |
| October 25th, 2005 08:46 AM |
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| gimmekeef |
I cant imagine having that much courage....Were there any songs inspired by her act? ..if not how sad!.... |
| October 25th, 2005 02:37 PM |
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| monkey_man |
The Neville Brothers did a tune called "Sister Rosa" |
| October 26th, 2005 07:20 AM |
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| corgi37 |
Easily, one of the greatest heroes of 20th Century America. Such pride and spirit. What a terrible period in history for the U.S. But, like the great nation they are, they came out better for it.
We were the same with our Aboriginals. They were not citizens until 1967. Until then, they were classified as "flora and fourna".
I saw one of those made for tv Hallmark type things on Rosa Parks, and though pretty cheaply made, was very moving and powerful.
And, to think, there are still people who think like its 1955 Deep South. I saw in the paper today about 2 sisters who have a white supremist thing going. They are a duo, home schooled by their Nazi loving Mom. Cant recall their names. One is called "Lamb". They are like 15 or something. They are from near Bakersfield, but the parents recently moved cause it wasnt "White enough". |
| October 26th, 2005 12:53 PM |
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| GimmeExile |
Great tribute to Rosa Parks on Apple's homepage.
Think Different, indeed!
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| October 26th, 2005 01:53 PM |
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| thejuf |
what a fitting tribute....thanks for posting it!
a courageous lady, a woman with balls!!!
bless her heart.... |
| October 26th, 2005 06:52 PM |
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| kath |
brave woman. bless her soul. |
| October 26th, 2005 07:04 PM |
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| CraigP |
It turns out she just wanted the driver.
R.I.P. |
| October 26th, 2005 08:18 PM |
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| glencar |
RIP. |
| October 26th, 2005 08:40 PM |
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| pdog |
An American Hero! Humble and brave!
One small gesture changed so much!
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