Rosa Parks
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
| Rosa Louise McCauley Parks | |
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| Born | February 4, 1913 Tuskegee, Alabama, USA |
| Died | October 24, 2005 Detroit, Michigan, USA |
Rosa "Lee" Louise Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African American seamstress and civil rights activist whom the United States Congress called the "Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement." She is most famous for her refusal in 1955 to give up a bus seat to a white man when ordered to do so by the bus driver, provoking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Her role in American history earned her an iconic legacy in American culture and worldwide civil rights movements.
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Early life
Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, daughter of James and Leona McCauley, a carpenter and a teacher. Small even as a child, she suffered poor health and had chronic tonsillitis. When her parents separated, she moved with her mother to Pine Level, Alabama, just outside Montgomery. There she grew up on a farm with her maternal grandparents, mother, and younger brother Sylvester and began her lifelong membership in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Her mother Leona home schooled Rosa until she was 11, when she enrolled in the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery, where her aunt lived, taking academic and some vocational courses. She then went on to a laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes for secondary education (now known as Alabama State University), but was forced to drop out to care for her grandmother, and later her mother, after they grew ill.
Under Jim Crow laws, it was quite easy to separate blacks and whites in every aspect of daily life except on public transportation in the South. Bus and train companies could not afford separate vehicles and so blacks and whites had to occupy the same space. Bus transportation was one of the most challenging areas for race relations in the South. Parks recalled going to elementary school in Pine Level where school buses took white students to their new school and black students had to walk to their school. She said, "I'd see the bus pass every day...But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world." Though Parks' autobiography recounts that some of her earliest memories are of the kindness of white strangers, racial segregation could not be ignored. When the Ku Klux Klan marched in the street in front of her house, Parks recalls her grandfather guarding the front door with a shotgun. The Montgomery Industrial School, founded and staffed by Northern whites for black children was twice burned by arsonists and its faculty ostracized by the white community. Her younger brother, Sylvester, would later return from the Second World War as a decorated veteran to a South where blacks in uniform were regarded as "uppity" and sometimes beaten.
In 1932, she married Raymond Parks, a barber from Montgomery, at her mother's house. Raymond was a member of the NAACP, at the time collecting money to support the Scottsboro Boys, a group of blacks falsely accused of raping two white women. After marriage Rosa worked a number of jobs ranging from domestic worker to hospital aide. At her husband's urging she finished her high school studies in 1933, at a time when less than seven percent of African-Americans had a high school diploma. Despite Jim Crow laws that made political participation by blacks difficult she persevered in registering to vote, succeeding on her third try.
In December 1943, Parks became active in the American Civil Rights Movement, joining the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, and was elected volunteer secretary to its president, E.D. Nixon. Of her position she said, "I was the only woman there, and they needed a secretary, and I was too timid to say no." She would continue as secretary until 1957. In the 1940s, Mr and Mrs. Parks were also members of the Voters' League. Some time soon after 1944, she held a brief job on Maxwell Air Force Base, federal property where segregation was not allowed, and rode on an integrated trolley. Speaking to her biographer, Parks noted, "You might just say Maxwell opened my eyes up." Parks worked as a housekeeper and seamstress for a white couple, Clifford and Virginia Durr. The politically liberal Durrs became her friends and encouraged Parks to attend, and eventually helped sponsor her to, the Highlander Folk School, an education center for workers' rights and racial equality in Monteagle, Tennessee in the summer of 1955.
Civil rights and legal context
One of the reasons for the desegregation experienced by Parks on Maxwell AFB was that she was not the first African American to refuse to give up her seat to a white person. In 1944 Jackie Robinson took a similar stand with an Army officer in Fort Hood, Texas, refusing to move to the back of a bus. He was brought before a court martial, which acquitted him. [1]
The NAACP had accepted and litigated other cases before, such as that of Irene Morgan ten years earlier, which resulted in a victory in the Supreme Court on Commerce Clause grounds. That victory only overturned state segregation laws as applied to actual travel in interstate commerce, such as interstate bus travel. Black leaders had begun to build a case around a 15-year-old girl, Claudette Colvin's arrest for refusing to relinquish her bus seat. Colvin was a student at Booker T. Washington High School. On March 2, 1955, she boarded a public bus. Colvin was handcuffed, arrested and forcibly removed from the bus when she refused to give up her seat to a white man. She screamed that her constitutional rights were being violated. At the time, Colvin was active in the NAACP's Youth Council. She was advised by none other than Mrs. Rosa Parks. Colvin said, "Mrs. Parks said always do what was right." Mrs. Parks was raising money for Colvin's defense. However, when E.D. Nixon learned that Colvin was pregnant, it was decided that Colvin was an unsuitable symbol for their cause. She was impregnated by a much older man soon after her arrest, which scandalized the deeply religious black community. They felt that the white press would manipulate Colvin's 'illegitimate' pregnancy as a means of undermining any boycott. Some historians have argued that civil-rights leaders, who were predominately middle class, were uneasy with Colvin's impoverished background. The NAACP had considered but rejected some earlier protesters deemed unable or unsuitable to withstand the pressure and trial cross examination of a legal challenge to racial segregation laws. Colvin was also prone to outbursts and cursing episodes. Many of the legal charges against Colvin were dropped. A boycott and legal case never materialized from the Colvin case law. [2]
Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus on Thursday, December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama after a day at work at the Montgomery Fair department store. She was sitting in the 'colored' section of the bus. The "colored" section of the buses in Montgomery was not fixed in size, but determined by the placement of a movable sign. On Montgomery buses, the first four rows were reserved for whites. The bus rear was reserved for blacks, who made up more than 75 percent of the bus system's riders. Blacks could sit in the middle rows until those seats were needed by whites. Then blacks had to move to seats in the rear, stand or, if there was no room, leave the bus. Even getting on the bus presented hurdles. If whites were already sitting in the front, blacks could board to pay the fare but then they had to disembark and re-enter through the rear door. There were times when the bus would depart before the paid-up customers made it to the back entrance. If the white section was full and another white person came aboard, blacks were required to relinquish their seats and move farther to the back. Blacks were not even allowed to sit across the aisle from whites. The driver could move the 'colored' section sign, or even remove it altogether. For years the black community had complained about this severe unfairness, and Mrs. Parks was no exception. Parks said, " My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest...I did a lot of walking in Montgomery. " Parks had her first run-in on the public bus in on a rainy day in 1943 when the bus driver, James Blake demanded that she get off the bus and reenter through the back door like every other black person. As she began to exit by the front door, she dropped her purse. Then Parks deliberately sat in a seat for white passengers, apparently to pick up her purse. The bus driver was enraged and had barely let her step off the bus before speeding off. Incensed, Rosa walked the more than five miles home in the rain.
On that notable day in 1955 at about 6 p.m., Mrs. Parks boarded the bus in downtown Montgomery, paid her fare, and sat in an empty seat in the first row of back seats reserved for blacks (near the middle of the bus, behind the 10 seats reserved for whites). Initially, she had not noticed that the bus driver was the same man, James Blake, who had mistreated her in 1943. As the bus traveled through its regular route, all of the "white-only" seats in the bus were filled. The bus reached the third stop in front of the Empire Theater, and several white passengers boarded the bus. Following the standard practice of segregation, Blake noted that the front of the bus was filled with white passengers and there were two or three men standing and thus moved the sign behind Parks and demanded that four blacks give up their seats in the middle section so the white passengers could sit. By Parks' account, Blake said, "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats." [3] Three of them complied. Parks said, "The driver wanted us to stand up, the four of us. We didn't move at the beginning, but he says, 'Let me have these seats.' And the other three people moved, but I didn't." [4] The black man sitting next to her gave his seat up. Parks moved, but toward the window seat. She did not get up or off her seat.[5] Blake said, "Why don't you stand up?" Parks said, "I said I don't think I should have to stand up." Blake called the police to arrest Parks. When recalling the incident for Eyes on the Prize, a 1987 public television series on the civil rights movement, Parks said, " When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up and I said, 'No, I'm not'. And he said, 'Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the police and have you arrested.' I said, 'You may do that.' " When Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her. As the officer took her away, she recalled that she asked, " Why do you push us around?" The officer's response, "I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest." She added, "I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind." Parks was charged with a violation of Chapter 6, Section 11 segregation law of the Montgomery City code even though she had not taken up a "white-only" seat — she was in a "colored section" but she was told to get up to allow a white man to sit. Four days later, she was tried on charges of disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. The trial lasted 30 minutes. Parks was found guilty and fined $10, plus $4 in court costs.[6] Parks appealed her conviction and formally challenged the legality of racial segregation. Years later, in recollecting the events of the day, Parks said, "When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night."
During a radio interview with Sydney Rogers in 1956 in West Oakland (several months after her arrest in 1955), when asked as to why she decided to not vacate her bus seat, Parks said:
- "I would have to know for once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen of Montgomery, Alabama."
Parks detailed her motivation in this moment in her autobiography, My Story:
- People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
In a 1992 interview with NPR's Lynn Neary, Parks recollected:
- "I did not want to be mistreated, I did not want to be deprived of a seat that I had paid for. It was just time...there was opportunity for me to take a stand to express the way I felt about being treated in that manner."
- "I had not planned to get arrested. I had plenty to do without having to end up in jail. But when I had to face that decision, I didn't hesitate to do so because I felt that we had endured that too long. The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became."
On Monday, December 5, 1955, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed. Its members elected as their president a virtual newcomer to Montgomery, a young and relatively unknown minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That Monday night, 50 leaders of the African American community, headed by Dr. King, gathered to discuss the proper actions to be taken as a result of Mrs. Parks' arrest. E.D. Nixon said, "My God, look what segregation has put in my hands!" Parks was the ideal plaintiff for a test case against city and state segregation laws. While the 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, unwed and pregnant, was deemed unacceptable to be the center of a civil rights mobilization, Dr. King stated that, "Mrs. Parks, on the other hand, was regarded as one of the finest citizens of Montgomery—not one of the finest Negro citizens—but one of the finest citizens of Montgomery." Parks was securely married, employed, possessed a quiet demeanor and was politically savvy. The selection of Parks for a test case supported by the NAACP has been speculated to be in part because she was employed by the NAACP.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
What ensued next was the Montgomery Bus Boycott. On Sunday, December 4, 1955, the Montgomery Bus Boycott announcement was made from black churches, and a front-page article in The Montgomery Advertiser, further spread the word. At a church rally that night, blacks unanimously agreed to continue the boycott until they were treated with courtesy, that black drivers be hired, and that seating in the middle of the bus be done on a first-come basis. On Monday, December 5, 1955, (the day of Parks' trial), the Women's Political Council distributed 35,000 leaflets that urged blacks to boycott Montgomery public buses. The handbill read, "We are...asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial...You can afford to stay out of school for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off the buses Monday." [7] It rained on Monday, December 5, but the black community persevered in their boycott. Some blacks rode in carpools. Others traveled in black cabs that charged the same fare as the bus fare, 10 cents. Most of the rest of the 40,000 black commuters walked, some for as far as 20 miles. The black community ended up boycotting public buses for 381 days. Dozens of public buses stood idle for months until the law requiring segregation on public buses was lifted. The boycott severely damaged the bus transit company's finances. This event helped spark many other protests against segregation. As a retaliation against the black community's bus boycott, many black churches were dynamited. Dr. King's home was bombed on in the early morning hours of January 30, 1956. E.D. Nixon's home was also attacked. This mass movement marked one of the largest and most successful challenges of racial segregation and it catapulted Dr. King to the forefront of the civil rights movement.
Through her role in initiating this boycott, Rosa Parks helped make other Americans aware of the civil rights struggle. Dr. King wrote in his 1958 book, Stride Toward Freedom, Parks' arrest was the precipitating factor rather than the cause of the protest. "The cause lay deep in the record of similar injustices...Actually no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.' "
Browder v. Gayle
Immediately after the commencement of the bus boycott, black leaders began discourse on the need for a federal lawsuit to challenge city and state bus segregation laws. About two months after the bus boycott began, Claudette Colvin's case was re-considered by black legal leaders. Attorneys Fred Gray, E.D. Nixon and Clifford Durr (a white lawyer and his wife, Virginia, who were activists in the civil rights movement) searched for the ideal case law to challenge the constitutional legitimacy of city and state bus segregation laws. Durr believed that an appeal of Mrs. Parks' case would just get tied up in the Alabama state courts. Gray researched for the law suit, consulting with NAACP legal counsels Robert Carter and Thurgood Marshall (who would later become U.S. solicitor general and a U.S. Supreme Court justice). Gray approached Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith, all women who had been mistreated by the Montgomery bus system the previous year. They all agreed to become plaintiffs in a civil action law suit. On February 1, 1956, case Browder v. Gayle (Browder was a Montgomery housewife; Gayle the mayor of Montgomery) was filed in U.S. District Court by Fred Gray. It was Browder v. Gayle that caused for segregation on public buses to be eradicated. [8]
On June 19, 1956, the U.S. District Court three-judge panel ruled that Section 301 (31a, 31b and 31c) of Title 48, Code of Alabama, 1940, as amended, and Sections, 10 and 11 of Chapter 6 of the Code of the City of Montgomery, 1952 "deny and deprive plaintiffs and other Negro citizens similarly situated of the equal protection of the laws and due process of law secured by the Fourteenth Amendment," (Browder v. Gayle, 1956). The court essentially decided that the precedent of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) could be applied to Browder v. Gayle. On November 13, 1956, in Browder v. Gayle, United States Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation on buses, deeming it unconstitutional. The court order arrived in Montgomery, Alabama on December 20, 1956. The bus boycott ended on December 21, 1956. However, more violence erupted following the court order, as snipers fired into buses as well as Dr. King's home, and bombs were tossed into churches and into the homes of many church ministers. [9]
Later life
After her arrest, Parks became an icon of the civil rights movement and suffered hardship as a result. She lost her job at the department store and her husband quit his job after his boss forbade him from talking about his wife or the legal case. Mrs Parks traveled and spoke extensively. In 1957, Raymond and Rosa Parks left Montgomery for Hampton, Virginia, mostly because Mrs. Parks was unable to find work, but also due to disagreements with Dr. King and other leaders of Montgomery's struggling civil rights movement. In Hampton, she found a job as a hostess in an inn at Hampton Institute. Later that year, at the urging of her younger brother, Sylvester, Mrs. Parks, Raymond Parks and her mother, Leona McCauley, moved to Detroit, Michigan. Mrs. Parks worked as a seamstress until 1965 when U.S. Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) hired her as a secretary and receptionist for his Congressional office in Detroit. She held this position until she retired in 1988.[10] In a telephone interview with CNN on October 24, 2005, Conyers recalled, "You treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene—just a very special person...'there is only one' Rosa Parks."
The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development was co-founded in February 1987 by Mrs Rosa Parks and Ms. Elaine Eason Steele in honor of Rosa's husband Raymond Parks, who died from cancer in 1977. The institute runs "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours introducing young people to important civil rights and underground railroad sites throughout the country. In 1992 she published, Rosa Parks: My Story, an autobiography leading up to her decision not to give up her seat aimed at younger readers.
On August 30, 1994, at age eighty one, Rosa Parks was attacked in her Detroit home by Joseph Skipper, who is also African American. The incident created outrage throughout America. Skipper said he didn't know he was in Parks' home but recognized her after entering. Skipper asked, "Hey, aren't you Rosa Parks?" to which she replied, "Yes." She handed him $3 when he demanded money and an additional $50 when he demanded more. Before fleeing, Skipper struck Parks in the face.[11] Skipper was arrested and charged with various breaking and entering offenses against Parks and other neighborhood victims. He admitted guilt and on August 8, 1995 was sentenced to eight to fifteen years in prison.[12]
In 1995, Parks published her memoirs Quiet Strength concentrating on the role her faith played in her life. On a 1997 trip, the Pathways to Freedom bus drove into a river killing Adisa Foluke, called Park's adopted grandson, who was a chaperon, and injuring several others. Parks served as a member of the Board of Advocates of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Lawsuits and controversy
In 1999 a lawsuit was filed on her behalf against the popular American hip hop duo OutKast and LaFace Records, claiming that the group had illegally used her name without her permission for their song "Rosa Parks", the most successful radio single of their 1998 album Aquemini.
In October 2004, U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh appointed Dennis Archer, a former mayor of Detroit and Michigan Supreme Court justice, as guardian of legal matters for Parks after her family expressed concerns that her caretakers and her lawyers were pursuing the case based on their own financial interest.[13] "My auntie would never, ever go to this length to hurt some young artists trying to make it in the world," Parks' niece, Rhea McCauley, said in an Associated Press interview. "As a family, our fear is that during her last days Auntie Rosa will be surrounded by strangers trying to make money off of her name."[14]
OutKast was dismissed from the suit in August 2004. Parks' attorneys and caretaker refiled and named BMG, Arista Records and LaFace Records as the defendants along with Barnes & Noble and Borders Group for selling the songs, and several people not connencted to the song, including the director and producer of the 1998 music video, asking for $5 billion in damages. The lawsuit was settled on April 15, 2005. In the settlement agreement, OutKast and their producers and record labels paid Parks an undisclosed cash settlement, agreed to work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in creating educational programs on the life of Rosa Parks. The record labels and OutKast admitted to no wrongdoing. Whether Park's legal fees were paid for from her settlement money or by the record companies was not disclosed.[15]
A scene in the 2002 film Barbershop, where characters discuss earlier instances of African-Americans refusing to give up their bus seats, caused activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to launch a boycott against the film. The scene showed a barber arguing that many other African Americans before Parks had resisted giving up their seats; but because of her status as an NAACP secretary, she received undeserved fame.
Death and funeral
Rosa Parks resided in Detroit until she died at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005, at about 19:00 hours EDT, at her apartment in a nursing home on the east side. She was diagnosed with progressive dementia in 2004.
The United States Senate passed a resolution on October 27 to honor Parks by allowing her body to lie in honor (also known as "lying in state") in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. The House of Representatives approved the resolution on October 28. Parks became the 31st person so honored since the practice began in 1852, the first woman to ever lie in state in the Rotunda, the first American who was not previously a government official, and the second non-government official after the body of Frenchman Pierre L'Enfant was brought to the capitol in 1909. She was also the second black person, after Jacob Chestnut, one of the two United States Capitol Police officers who were fatally shot on July 24, 1998. Prior to Parks, the most recent person to lie in state in the Capitol was former President Ronald Reagan in 2004.
Parks first lay in repose on Saturday, October 29, in the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in Montgomery, Alabama, and a memorial service was held the following morning in that church. Parks' casket was draped in lace. Her body was dressed in the uniform of a church deaconess as she lay at the altar of the St. Paul AME Church. Her coffin was taken to the church in a horse-drawn hearse. On the evening of Sunday, October 30, and her coffin transported to Washington, D.C. aboard a 1957 bus, and placed in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. An estimated 50,000 viewed the casket in the Rotunda. On October 31 people not in the Rotunda could see it on C-SPAN. This was followed by another memorial service at another St. Paul AME church in Washington on the afternoon of Monday, October 31. From Monday to Wednesday morning, she lay in repose at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Michigan. Her funeral was held on Wednesday, November 2, at the Greater Grace Temple Church.
Her funeral was covered on many T.V. stations including FOX NEWS, CNN, NBC, and C-SPAN. However, because of the large number of speakers, most stations outside of the city of Detroit chose to show only parts of the service. Because of the large number of speakers, the funeral lasted an incredible seven hours, four hours more than its planned length. This, combined with an hour start delay (during which time the family filed past the casket), caused the funeral to run well into darkness.
After the funeral service ended, an honor guard from the Michigan National Guard laid the American Flag over the casket. The honor guard then carried her casket out to a waiting horse-drawn hearse. The original plan had called for the horse-drawn hearse to carry her casket all the way to the cemetary. However, because of the darkness, after the casket had gone fewer than two blocks, the decision was made to transfer the casket to the 1957 Cadillac hearse that had previously been used, for time and safety reasons. Although the plan had been for the procession to take place in daylight, one reporter commented on how the lights outside caused the motorcade to appear as if it were glowing. As the hearse passed the thousands of people who had turned out to view the procession, many clapped and released white balloons.
Rosa was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery in the chapel's mausoleum. (The chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel just after her death.) [16] City officials in Montgomery and Detroit announced on October 27 that the first seats of their city buses would be reserved with black ribbons in honor of Parks until her funeral. Parks had previously prepared and placed a headstone on the selected location with the inscription "Rosa L. Parks, wife, 1913— ".
Awards and honors
In 1979, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People awarded Parks the Spingarn Medal, its highest honor, and she received the Martin Luther King Sr. Award the next year. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1983 for her achievements in civil rights. However, given the pivotal role she had played in the nation's history, she had received few national accolades until very late in life. In 1990, she was called at the last moment to be part of the group welcoming Nelson Mandela, who had just been released from his imprisonment in South Africa. Upon spotting her in the reception line, Mandela called out her name and, hugging her, said, "You sustained me while I was in prison all those years."[17]
Parks received the Rosa Parks Peace Prize in 1994 in Stockholm, Sweden, followed by the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the U.S. executive branch, in 1996. President Bill Clinton presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rosa Parks on September 9, 1996. In 1998, she became the first awardee for the International Freedom Conductor Award given by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. The next year Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch. In 1999, she also received the Detroit-Windsor International Freedom Festival Freedom Award. Also in 1999, she was a guest of President Bill Clinton during his 1999 State of the Union Address and Time magazine named Parks one of the top twenty most influential and iconic figures of the twentieth century. [18] In 2000, her home state awarded her the Alabama Academy of Honor as well as the first Governor's Medal of Honor for Extraordinary Courage. She was also awarded two dozen honorary doctorates from universities worldwide and was made an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
The Rosa Parks Library and Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, was dedicated to her in November 2001. It is located on the corner where Parks boarded the famed bus. The most popular item in the museum is a sculpture of Parks sitting on a bus bench. The documentary "Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks" received a 2002 nomination for Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject. That year she also collaborated in a TV movie of her life starring Angela Bassett.
On October 27 and October 28, the Senate and House (respectively) voted to have Rosa Parks lie in state, making her the first woman and only the second black person ever to be accorded the honor.
On October 30 the President issued a Proclamation ordering that all flags on US public areas be flown at half staff. The proclamation stated, "As a mark of respect for the memory of Rosa Parks, I hereby order, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, that on the day of her interment, the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset on such day. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same period at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations."
Notable quotes and citations about Rosa Parks
Presidential Medal of Freedom Award Ceremony
Excerpt of speech from President Bill Clinton, (September 9, 1996):
"When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on an Alabama bus 40 years ago, she ignited the single most significant social movement in American history. When she sat down on the bus, she stood up for the American ideals of equality and justice and demanded that the rest of us do the same. When our descendants look back in time to trace the fight for freedom, Rosa Parks will stand among our nation's greatest patriots, the legendary figures whose courage sustained us and pushed us forward. She is, and continues to be, a national treasure." [19]
Award citation: "On December 1, 1955, going home from work, Rosa Parks boarded a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and with one modest act of defiance, changed the course of history. By refusing to give up her seat, she sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and helped launch the civil rights movement. In the years since, she has remained committed to the cause of freedom, speaking out against injustice here and abroad. Called the First Lady of Civil Rights, Rosa Parks has demonstrated, in the words of Robert Kennedy, that each time a person strikes out against injustice, she sends forth the tiny ripple of hope, which, crossing millions of others, can sweep down the walls of oppression." [20]
Notes
- ^ "Parks Recalls Bus Boycott, Excerpts from an interview with Lynn Neary", NPR, 1992
- ^ "Heros and Icons: Rosa Parks", Time.com, June 14, 1999
- ^ "Civil rights icon Rosa Parks dies at 92", CNN.com, October 25, 2005
- ^ "Browder v. Gayle: The Women Before Rosa Parks", Tolerance.org, 2005
- ^ "Is Barbershop Right About Rosa Parks?", Slate, September 27, 2005
- ^ "Rosa Parks, 92, Founding Symbol of Civil Rights Movement, Dies", New York Times, October 25, 2005
- ^ Audio interview of Parks linked to from "Civil Rights Icon Rosa Parks Dies", National Public Radio, 25 October 2005
- ^ "Civil rights icon Rosa Parks dies at 92", CNN.com, October 25, 2005
- ^ "Rosa Parks, 92, Founding Symbol of Civil Rights Movement, Dies", New York Times, October 25, 2005
- ^ "Assailant Recognized Rosa Parks", Detroit Free Press, September 3, 1994
- ^ "Man Gets Prison Term For Attack on Rosa Parks", San Francisco Chronicle, August 8, 1995
- ^ "'I understand I am a symbol, but I have never gotten used to being a public person'", Associated Press State & Local Wire, December 4, 2004
- ^ "Medical records show Rosa Parks had dementia as early as 2002", Associated Press State & Local Wire, January 13, 2005
- ^ "Parks settles OutKast lawsuit", Detroit News, April 15, 2005
- ^ "Tri-state Judge Says Rosa Parks' Work Goes On", WPCO News, 25 October 2005
References
- "Browder v. Gayle: The Women Before Rosa Parks" by Tim Walker, Tolerance.org, retrieved October 27, 2005
- "Heroes and Icons: Rosa Parks" by Rita Dove, Time.com, June 14, 1999, retrieved October 29, 2005
- "Civil rights icon Rosa Parks dies at 92" by CNN.com, October 25, 2005, retrieved October 27, 2005
- "Is Barbershop Right About Rosa Parks?" by Brendan I. Koerner, Slate, September 27, 2005, retrieved October 27, 2005
- "Rosa Parks, 92, Founding Symbol of Civil Rights Movement, Dies" by E.R. Shipp, The New York Times, October 25, 2005, retrieved October 27, 2005
- Editorial. 1974. "Two decades later." New York Times (May 17): 38. ("Within a year of Brown, Rosa Parks, a tired seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, was, like Homer Plessy sixty years earlier, arrested for her refusal to move to the back of the bus."
See also
External links
Multimedia and interviews
- Civil Rights Icon Rosa Parks Dies - National Public Radio
- Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks 1913-2005 - Democracy Now! democracynow.org
Official
Other
- Rosa Parks's Ancestry and Genealogy
- Complete audio/video and newspaper archive of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Bruderhof Peacemakers Guide profile on Rosa Parks
- The mug shot of Rosa Parks after she was arrested in Montgomery
- Rosa Parks interview and photographs
- News of Parks' Death from Reuters
- Rosa and Raymond Parks Marriage Profile
- Is Barbershop right about Rosa Parks?
- Rosa Parks - A timeline of her life
- Rosa Parks was not the beginning - Alternet
