Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks Dies at 92

By BREE FOWLER, Associated Press Writer 17 minutes ago


DETROIT - Rosa Lee Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday evening. She was 92.

Mrs. Parks died at her home during the evening of natural causes, with close friends by her side, said Gregory Reed, an attorney who represented her for the past 15 years.

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.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said he felt a personal tie to the civil rights icon: "She stood up by sitting down. I'm only standing here because of her."

The Rev. Al Sharpton called Mrs. Parks "a gentle woman whose single act changed the most powerful nation in the world. ... One of the highlights of my life was meeting and getting to know her."

Speaking in 1992, Mrs. Parks 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 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 the Detroit office of Democratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) from 1965 until retiring in 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."

Rosa Parks to Lie in Honor at Capitol

In death, Rosa Parks is joining a select few, including presidents and war heroes, accorded a public viewing in the Capitol Rotunda. It's the place where, six years ago, President Clinton and congressional leaders lauded the former seamstress for a simple act of defiance that changed the course of race relations.

On Sunday, Parks becomes the first woman to lie in honor in the vast circular room under the Capitol dome.

The House agreed by voice vote Friday that the body of Parks will lie in honor in the Rotunda on Sunday and Monday "so that the citizens of the United States may pay their last respects to this great American." The Senate approved the resolution Thursday night.

Congress has authorized this rite only 29 times since homage was paid to Henry Clay in 1852. Those honored include Abraham Lincoln, Gen. John Pershing, John JFK, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and unknown soldiers from the world wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The most recent was President Reagan in June last year.

Parks is one of the few not to be a government official or a member of the military. In 1909 Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the architect who designed Washington, D.C., was commemorated 84 years after his death. In 1998 two Capitol Police officers slain in the line of duty lay in the ornate room 180 feet below the Capitol dome.

Parks, arrested in 1955 after refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., turned to her minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King, for aid. King in turn led a 381-day boycott of the city's bus system that helped initiate the modern civil rights movement.

"This brave, courageous spirit ignited a movement, not just in Montgomery, but a movement that spread like wildfire across the American South and the nation," said Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a leader of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

"The Capitol serves as a beacon of American liberty, freedom and democracy, and Rosa Parks served as the mother of the America we grew to be," House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a joint statement.

Parks, who for many years worked in the office of Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., was honored with the Congressional Gold Medal in ceremonies in the Rotunda in June 1999.

Clinton said he was 9 years old when Parks refused to give up her seat. and he and his friends "couldn't figure out anything we could do since we couldn't even vote. So we began to sit in the back of the bus when we got on."

In 1987, Parks co-founded a nonprofit group, the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, to help young people in Detroit, her home since 1957.

According to Conyers' office, a memorial service will be held for Parks at the St. Paul AME Church in Montgomery on Sunday morning.

Her body will then be flown to Washington for viewing in the Capitol on Sunday evening and Monday. President Bush is scheduled to attend memorial services at the Metropolitan AME Church in Washington on Monday, Conyers' office said. The White House said Bush would also go to the Rotunda to pay his respects.

From Monday night until Wednesday morning, Parks will lie in repose at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., which has restored the bus on which she refused to give up her seat, will truck it to the Wright museum for display.

Aretha Franklin is to sing at the funeral Wednesday at Greater Grace Temple Church in Detroit, said an official with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute of Self Development.

Officials in Detroit and Montgomery, meanwhile, said the first seats of their buses would be reserved as a tribute to Parks' legacy until her funeral. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick put a black ribbon Thursday on the first passenger seat of one of about 200 buses where seats will be reserved.

"We cannot do enough to pay tribute to someone who has so positively impacted the lives of millions across the world," Kilpatrick said.

Rosa Parks to Lie in Honor at Capitol

In death, Rosa Parks is joining a select few, including presidents and war heroes, accorded a public viewing in the Capitol Rotunda. It's the place where, six years ago, President Clinton and congressional leaders lauded the former seamstress for a simple act of defiance that changed the course of race relations.

On Sunday, Parks becomes the first woman to lie in honor in the vast circular room under the Capitol dome.

The House agreed by voice vote Friday that the body of Parks will lie in honor in the Rotunda on Sunday and Monday "so that the citizens of the United States may pay their last respects to this great American." The Senate approved the resolution Thursday night.

Congress has authorized this rite only 29 times since homage was paid to Henry Clay in 1852. Those honored include Abraham Lincoln, Gen. John Pershing, John JFK, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and unknown soldiers from the world wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The most recent was President Reagan in June last year.

Parks is one of the few not to be a government official or a member of the military. In 1909 Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the architect who designed Washington, D.C., was commemorated 84 years after his death. In 1998 two Capitol Police officers slain in the line of duty lay in the ornate room 180 feet below the Capitol dome.

Parks, arrested in 1955 after refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., turned to her minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King, for aid. King in turn led a 381-day boycott of the city's bus system that helped initiate the modern civil rights movement.

"This brave, courageous spirit ignited a movement, not just in Montgomery, but a movement that spread like wildfire across the American South and the nation," said Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a leader of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

"The Capitol serves as a beacon of American liberty, freedom and democracy, and Rosa Parks served as the mother of the America we grew to be," House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a joint statement.

Parks, who for many years worked in the office of Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., was honored with the Congressional Gold Medal in ceremonies in the Rotunda in June 1999.

Clinton said he was 9 years old when Parks refused to give up her seat. and he and his friends "couldn't figure out anything we could do since we couldn't even vote. So we began to sit in the back of the bus when we got on."

In 1987, Parks co-founded a nonprofit group, the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, to help young people in Detroit, her home since 1957.

According to Conyers' office, a memorial service will be held for Parks at the St. Paul AME Church in Montgomery on Sunday morning.

Her body will then be flown to Washington for viewing in the Capitol on Sunday evening and Monday. President Bush is scheduled to attend memorial services at the Metropolitan AME Church in Washington on Monday, Conyers' office said. The White House said Bush would also go to the Rotunda to pay his respects.

From Monday night until Wednesday morning, Parks will lie in repose at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., which has restored the bus on which she refused to give up her seat, will truck it to the Wright museum for display.

Aretha Franklin is to sing at the funeral Wednesday at Greater Grace Temple Church in Detroit, said an official with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute of Self Development.

Officials in Detroit and Montgomery, meanwhile, said the first seats of their buses would be reserved as a tribute to Parks' legacy until her funeral. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick put a black ribbon Thursday on the first passenger seat of one of about 200 buses where seats will be reserved.

"We cannot do enough to pay tribute to someone who has so positively impacted the lives of millions across the world," Kilpatrick said.