Rosa Parks, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nearly 50 years ago, Rosa Parks made a simple decision that sparked a revolution. When a white man demanded she give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus, the then 42-year-old seamstress said no. Her one small act of defiance galvanized a generation of activists, including a young Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and earned her the title "mother of the civil rights movement." Mrs. Parks died Monday evening at her home in Detroit of natural causes at the age of 92.
In 1955, 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.
Mrs. Parks, was riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat. She 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.
Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. King, 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," she 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.
Her "act of personal courage." as George Bush called it, should be an inspiration to persons of all colour. The person who said "walk softly and cary a big stick" could have been referring to Mrs. Parks, she may have talked in a southern whisper, but her actions roared like a hurricane, fanning the winds of change. To you Rosa Parks, there will always be a seat on the bus. Rest in peace amongst the angels.
Rosa Parks was presented with the Congressional Gold Medal, on June 15, 1999.
Later,
Kenaz
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