African American Hero of the Day

Rosa Parks (1913-2005)

Activist

Rosa Parks has been called the spark that lit the fire, and the mother of the movement. Her courage to defy custom and law to uphold her personal rights and dignity inspired the African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama to fight for their rights by staging one of the longest boycotts in history.

Born Rosa Louise McCauley, on February 4, 1913, she was raised by her mother and grandparents in Tuskegee and Montgomery, Alabama. After attending segregated schools, she went to the all-black Alabama State College. In 1932 she married Raymond Parks, a barber. Both of them worked for the local NAACP chapter, and Rosa became local NAACP secretary in the 1950s.

On December 1, 1955, as she was riding home from work, she was ordered by the bus driver to give up her seat so that a white man might sit. She refused. She was arrested and fined $14. Her case was the last straw for the blacks of Montgomery, who were tired of being treated as underclass citizens as Parks was. A city-wide boycott was organized to force the city to desegregate public transportation. A young, little-known minister by the name of Martin Luther King Jr. became involved and lectured the nation on the injustice of segregation. Blacks, and a few whites, organized peacefully together to transport boycotters to and from work, and they continued, despite opposition from the city and state governments, for 382 days.

When the boycott ended on December 21, 1956, both Parks and King were national heroes, and the Supreme Court had ruled that segregation on city buses was unconstitutional. The mass movement of nonviolent social change that was started lasted more than a decade, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voter's Rights Act of 1965.

Because of the harassment Rosa Parks and her family received during and after the boycott, they moved to Detroit, Michigan in 1957. She began working with Congressman John Conyers and continued to be involved in the civil rights struggle. She marched on Washington in 1963, and into Montgomery in 1965. Even as her life had quieted down, she received tributes for her dedication and inspiration; in 1980, she received the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize. As she headed toward retirement from John Conyers's office in 1988, she became involved in other activities, like the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute of Self Development in Detroit, founded in 1987.

Once retired, in the years that followed, Parks' courage and commitment to justice was honored with numerous accolades. In 1990 her birthday was celebrated in the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.; in April 1999 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the inaugural International Freedom Conductor Award; and Congressed authorized President Bill Clinton to bestow on Parks the Congressional Gold Medal which is the country's highest civilian honor.

In the state of Alabama, Parks was awarded the Alabama Academy of Honor and the first Governor's Medal of Honor in 2000, and in 2001 Troy State University in Montgomery dedicated the Rosa Parks Library and Museum. The Museum featured a statue of Parks and an exhibit featuring her conversation with the bus driver in 1955 when she was told to give up her seat. In 2001 her home was placed on the Nation Registry of Historic Places and in 2002 her life story was portrayed in the television movie Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory. In the midst of positives in her life, Parks did have some challenges. In 2000 she went to court to challenge the use of her name in the title of a song by the group Outkast that she saw as offensive. The case was initially dismissed but in 2001 it was brought before an appeals court. The court ruled in her favor.

In 2004 Parks was diagnosed with dementia, which diminishes the cognitive skills. On October 25, 2005, at the age of ninety-two, Rosa Louise McCauley Parks died in Detroit, Michigan. Parks's body lay in state at the African Methodist Church and later was moved to the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., as decreed by a resolution and vote by the U.S. Congress. This honor is only given to those citizens who have given extraordinary service to the nation. Her body was later taken back to Detroit to the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History where it laid in state until her funeral on November 2. On the 50th anniversary of Parks's arrest, President George W. Bush signed a resolution that called for a statue of Parks to be placed in the U.S. Capital's National Statuary Hall. Rosa Parks, known as the Mother of the Modern Civil Rights Movement, dedicated her life to freedom, justice and equality for all citizens.

From African American Almanac: 400 Years of Triumph, Courage and Excellence by Lean'tin Bracks, (c) 2012 Visible Ink Press(R). A wealth of milestones, inspiration, and challenges met . . .