NATIONAL NEWS
October 25, 2005
Goodbye to a Civil Rights Leader
The world remembers Rosa Parks, a hero who took a stand for race equality nearly 50 years ago
 Parks smiled after being honored with the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. |
Almost 50 years ago, Rosa Parks helped change the nation by breaking the rules. Parks, a black woman, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Her refusal sparked an entire movement. Parks died on Monday at her home in Detroit, Michigan. She was 92.
Standing Up For Equality By Sitting Down
In 1955, some laws required that blacks and whites had to sit separately on buses, in restaurants and in other public places throughout the south. This was called segregation.
 |  Rosa Parks is fingerprinted in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 after refusing to give up her seat on a bus. |
One law stated that blacks had to give up their seats on buses to whites. On December 1, 1955, Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white man. She was arrested by police. "I felt I had the right to be treated as any other passenger," Parks said.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
Black leaders urged black people to boycott, or refuse to use, the buses in Montgomery. A young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. led the peaceful boycott. Though originally scheduled for only one day, the boycott lasted 381 days. At the time, blacks made up about two-thirds of Montgomery’s bus riders.
People walked many miles to work or home to avoid using the buses and the bus companies lost around $3,000 each day. The U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled that Montgomery could no longer have a segregated public transportation system because it violated the Constitution. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 required all public facilities across the country be desegregated.
|  A father and son are two of the more than 30,000 people who paid tribute to Rosa Parks in Washington D.C. |
Mother of the Civil Rights Movement
Parks was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her father was a carpenter and her mother was a teacher. Before Parks became active in the civil rights movement, she was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and worked as a seamstress.
After the Montgomery bus boycott, Parks and her family moved to Detroit, Michigan. She worked for U.S. Representative John Conyers until she retired in 1988.
Parks' example of peaceful and nonviolent protest encouraged a generation to take action to change the nation. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said Parks helped him find success in life. "She stood up by sitting down. I'm only standing here because of her."
