Rosa Parks

died :( loved her

died :( loved her


Definitely one of my heroes.

Well, if they haven't already, they can start naming new high schools after her. :)

Wonderful lady!

US Civil Rights Icon Dies at Age 92

By Matthew Schneider
Washington
25 October 2005

Rosa Parks, a seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama, who would not give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955, died Monday at the age of 92. Historians mark the date of her quiet-but-revolutionary act as the start of the modern civil rights movement in the United States.

If you had seen Rosa Parks walking down the street, in recent years, you would never guess that the slender, silver-haired lady with large spectacles had anything to do with an event that ignited black civil rights as one of the main national issues of the middle 20th Century.

On December First, 1955, Mrs. Parks had finished her work as a seamstress in a Montgomery, Alabama, store and boarded a city bus to go home. She took a seat in the 11th row, behind the seats reserved exclusively for white passengers, as required by the city's segregation law at that time. Blacks were entitled to seats from the 11th row to the rear of a bus. However, the city law said if the first 10 rows were filled, a white passenger could request a seat in the back of a bus. Rosa Parks remembered the bus was crowded with people standing in the aisle when several whites boarded. A white man told the driver he wanted a seat. The driver, who had the authority under city law, went to the rear of the bus and ordered Mrs. Parks and three other black passengers to get up. The others reluctantly stood. Rosa Parks, tired after a day of work, refused.

"When they stood up and I stayed where I was, he asked me if I was going to stand and I told him that 'no, I wasn't,' and he told me if I did not stand up he was going to have me arrested. And, I told him to go on and have me arrested," Mrs. Parks said.

The bus driver called the police and when they arrived he told them he needed the seats for his white passengers.

"He pointed at me and said, 'that one won't stand up.' The two policemen came near me and only one spoke to me. He asked me if the driver had asked me to stand up? I said, 'yes.' He asked me why I didn't stand up," Mrs. Parks said. "I told him I didn't think I should have to stand up. So I asked him: 'Why do you push us around?' And he told me, 'I don't know, but the law is the law and you are under arrest.'"

Mrs. Parks said her decision to remain seated was based on her desire to be treated with decency and dignity:

"This was not the way I wanted to be treated after I had paid the same fare this man had paid -- he hadn't paid any more than I did but I had worked all day and I can recall feeling quite annoyed and inconvenienced. And I was very determined to, in this way, show that I felt that I wanted to be treated decently on this bus or where ever I wasMrs. Parks said.

Rosa Parks, who worked for the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, continued to assert that she had not intended to provoke her arrest.

"I had only intended to go home and take care of whatever matters I had because I had an NAACP youth conference that weekend and I also was getting out the notices for the senior branch of the NAACP (convention). I didn't move because I didn't feel like it was helping us or making things lighter [easier] for us -- me as an individual and us as a people to continue to be pushed around because of our race and colorMrs. Parks said.

Her arrest for violating the city segregation law was the catalyst for a mass boycott by blacks of the city's buses, whose ridership had been 70 percent black.

That boycott brought the young minister Martin Luther King, Junior, to national prominence as the head of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the group that organized and led the protest. The Montgomery Improvement Association also filed a federal suit challenging the constitutionality of the segregation law on February first, 1956. The boycott continued 382 days, until December 20, 1956, when the United States Supreme Court ordered city officials to desegregate their buses....[continued]
http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-10-25-voa3.cfm

So sad when someone dies

But it's good to remember that she lived to a ripe old age and just did so much with her life that helped the lives of so many others. Not only did she help earn rights for African Americans but she should also be a hero to the white or anyone for that matter b/c she called to attention something terrible, let it be newsworthy making people see the error of their ways so everyone could begin a change for the better.

All it takes is that one time for someone to stand up (or in this case sit down) and say, "no, no more" and history is turned. Its an impressive and overwhelming thought. I thank Rosa Parks for so many things, but I thank her the most for that day in Montgomery.

Awwww...She was an amazing woman! God bless you, Rosa.

She was a genuine heroine for all humanity. God bless her soul.

What a wonderful gift she was and how awesome that she lived so long, unlike many others that stood up for their rights. R.I.P. Rosa Parks!

that we were all this strong in matter's of equality.

well done, Rosa.

Rosa Parks was a truly inspirational woman...we need more people in the world just like her! :)

Just goes to show that one person can make a difference.