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Rosa Parks

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Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African
American civil rights activist whom the U.S. Congress later called "Mother of the Modern-
Day Civil Rights Movement".

On December 1, 1955, Parks became famous for refusing to obey bus driver James
Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. This action
of civil disobedience started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which is one of the largest
movements against racial segregation. In addition, this launched Martin Luther King, Jr.,
who was involved with the boycott, to prominence in the civil rights movement. She has
had a lasting legacy worldwide.

Early years

Rosa Parks was born as Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4, 1913,
to James McCauley and Leona Edwards, respectively a carpenter and a teacher, and
was of African-American, Cherokee-Creek, and Scots-Irish ancestry. Rosa Parks's great
grandfather was a Scotch-Irishman. She was small, even for a child, and she suffered poor
health and had chronic tonsillitis. When her parents separated, she moved with her
mother to Pine Level, just outside Montgomery, Alabama. 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. She was homeschooled
by her mother until she was eleven, then enrolled at the Industrial School for Girls in
Montgomery where she took academic and vocational courses. Parks then went on to
a laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes for
secondary education but was forced to drop out to care for her grandmother, and later
for her mother, after they became ill.

Under Jim Crow laws, black and white people were segregated in virtually every
aspect of daily life in the South, including public transportation. Bus and train companies
didn't provide separate vehicles for the different races but did enforce seating policies
that allocated separate sections for blacks and whites. School bus transportation,
however, was unavailable in any form for black schoolchildren 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 theirs: "I'd see the bus pass every day...
But to me, that was a way of life; we'd no choice but to accept what was the custom.
The bus was among the first ways I realised there was a black world and a white world."

Although Parks' autobiography recounts that some of her earliest memories are of the
kindness of white strangers, her situation made it impossible to ignore racism. When the
Ku Klux Klan marched down 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 white northerners for black children, was burned twice by arsonists, and its
faculty was ostracised by the white community.
In 1932, Rosa 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 black men falsely accused of raping two white women.
After her marriage, Rosa took numerous 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 7% of African Americans had a high school diploma. Despite the Jim Crow laws
that made political participation by black people difficult, she succeeded in registering to
vote on her third try.

In December 1943, Parks became active in the Civil Rights Movement, joined the
Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, and was elected volunteer secretary to its
president, Edgar Nixon. Of her position, she later said, "I was the only woman there, and
they needed a secretary, and I was too timid to say no." She continued as secretary until
1957. In the 1940s, Parks and her husband were also members of the Voters' League.
Sometime soon after 1944, she held a brief job at Maxwell Air Force Base, a federally
owned area where racial segregation wasn't allowed, and rode on an integrated
trolley. Speaking to her biographer, Parks noted, "You might just say Maxwell opened my
eyes up." Parks also 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—at the Highlander Folk School, an education
centre for workers' rights and racial equality in Monteagle, Tennessee, in the summer of
1955.

Like many black people, Parks was deeply moved by the brutal murder of Emmett Till in
August 1955. On November 27, 1955 — only four days before she refused to give up her
seat—she later recalled that she'd attended a mass meeting in Montgomery which
focused on this case as well as the recent murders of George W. Lee and Lamar Smith.
The featured speaker at the meeting was T.R.M. Howard, a black civil rights leader from
Mississippi who headed the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. People also said that
Rosa Parks was "Sweet and soft spoken but made a statement that screamed so loud."

Civil rights activism

Events leading up to boycott

In 1944, athletic star Jackie Robinson took a similar stand in a confrontation with a United
States Army officer in Fort Hood, Texas, refusing to move to the back of a bus. Robinson
was brought before a court-martial, which acquitted him. 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 U.S. Supreme Court on Commerce Clause grounds. That
victory, however, overturned state segregation laws only insofar as they applied to
travel in interstate commerce, such as interstate bus travel. Black activists had begun to
build a case around the arrest of a 15-year-old girl, Claudette Colvin, a student at Booker
T. Washington High School in Montgomery. On March 2, 1955, Colvin was handcuffed,
arrested and forcibly removed from a public bus when she refused to give up her seat to
a white man. She claimed that her constitutional rights were being violated. At the time,
Colvin was active in the NAACP's Youth Council, a group to which Rosa Parks served as
Advisor.

Colvin recollected, "Mrs. Parks said, 'do what is right.'" Parks was raising money for
Colvin's defence, but when E.D. Nixon learned that Colvin was pregnant, it was decided
that Colvin was an unsuitable symbol for their cause. Soon after her arrest she'd
conceived a child with a much older married man, a moral transgression that scandalised
the deeply religious black community. Strategists believed that the segregationist white
press would use Colvin's pregnancy to undermine any boycott. The NAACP also had
considered, but rejected, earlier protesters deemed unable or unsuitable to withstand
the pressures of cross-examination in a legal challenge to racial segregation laws. Colvin
was also known to engage in verbal outbursts and cursing. Many of the legal charges
against Colvin were dropped. A boycott and legal case never materialised from the
Colvin case, and legal strategists continued to seek a complainant beyond reproach.

In Montgomery, the first four rows of bus seats were reserved for white people. Buses
had "coloured" sections for black people—who made up more than 75% of the bus
system's riders—generally in the rear of the bus. These sections were not fixed in size but
were determined by the placement of a movable sign. Black people also could sit in the
middle rows, until the white section was full. Then they'd to move to seats in the rear,
stand, or, if there was no room, leave the bus. Black people were not allowed to sit
across the aisle from white people. The driver also could move the "coloured" section
sign, or remove it altogether. If white people were already sitting in the front, black
people could board to pay the fare, but then had to disembark and reenter through the
rear door. There were times when the bus departed before the black customers who
had paid made it to the back entrance.

For years, the black community had complained that the situation was unfair, and Parks
was no exception: "My resisting being mistreated on the bus didn't begin with that
particular arrest...I did a lot of walking in Montgomery." Parks had her first run-in on the
public bus 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. As she began to exit by the front
door, she dropped her purse. Parks sat down for a moment in a seat for white passengers
to pick up her purse. The bus driver was enraged and barely let her step off the bus
before speeding off. Rosa walked more than five miles (8 km) home in the rain.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

After a day at work at Montgomery Fair department store, Parks boarded the Cleveland
Avenue bus at around 6 p.m., Thursday, December 1, 1955, in downtown Montgomery.
She paid her fare and sat in an empty seat in the first row of back seats reserved for
blacks in the "coloured" section, which was near the middle of the bus and directly
behind the ten seats reserved for white passengers. Initially, she hadn't noticed that the
bus driver was the same man, James F. Blake, who had left her in the rain in 1943. As the
bus travelled along its regular route, all of the white-only seats in the bus filled up. The bus
reached the third stop in front of the Empire Theatre, and several white passengers
boarded.

In 1900, Montgomery had passed a city ordinance for the purpose of segregating
passengers by race. Conductors were given the power to assign seats to accomplish
that purpose; however, no passengers would be required to move or give up their seat
and stand if the bus was crowded and no other seats were available. Over time and by
custom, however, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the practise of requiring black
riders to move whenever there were no white only seats left.

So, following standard practise, bus driver 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
"coloured" section sign behind Parks and demanded that four black people give up their
seats in the middle section so that the white passengers could sit. Years later, in recalling
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."

By Parks' account, Blake said, "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have
those seats." 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." The black man sitting next to her gave up his
seat. Parks moved, but toward the window seat; she didn't get up to move to the newly
repositioned coloured section. Blake then said, "Why don't you stand up?" Parks
responded, "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.'"

During a 1956 radio interview with Sydney Rogers in West Oakland several months after
her arrest, when asked why she'd decided not to vacate her bus seat, Parks said, "I would
have to know for once and for all what rights I'd as a human being and a citizen of
Montgomery, Alabama."

She also detailed her motivation in her autobiography, My Story »

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 as she remembered it was, "I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're
under arrest." She later said, "I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the
very last time that I'd 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 technically hadn't taken up a white-only seat—
she had been in a coloured section. E.D. Nixon and Clifford Durr bailed Parks out of jail the
evening of December 2.

That evening, Nixon conferred with Alabama State College professor Jo Ann Robinson
about Parks' case. Robinson, a member of the Women's Political Council (WPC), stayed
up all night mimeographing over 35,000 handbills announcing a bus boycott. The
Women's Political Council was the first group to officially endorse the boycott.

On Sunday, December 4, 1955, plans for the Montgomery Bus Boycott were announced
at black churches in the area, and a front-page article in The Montgomery Advertiser
helped spread the word. At a church rally that night, attendees unanimously agreed to
continue the boycott until they were treated with the level of courtesy they expected,
until black drivers were hired, and until seating in the middle of the bus was handled on a
first-come basis.

Four days later, Parks 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. Parks appealed her conviction and formally challenged the legality of racial
segregation. In a 1992 interview with National Public Radio's Lynn Neary, Parks recalled:

On Monday, December 5, 1955, after the success of the one-day boycott, a group of 16
to 18 people gathered at the Mt. Zion AME Zion Church to discuss boycott strategies.
The group agreed that a new organisation was needed to lead the boycott effort if it
were to continue. Rev. Ralph David Abernathy suggested the name "Montgomery
Improvement Association" (MIA). The name was adopted, and the MIA was formed. Its
members elected as their president a relative newcomer to Montgomery, a young and
mostly unknown minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

That Monday night, 50 leaders of the African American community gathered to discuss
the proper actions to be taken in response to 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, had been deemed unacceptable to be the centre of a civil rights
mobilisation, 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 and employed, possessed a quiet
and dignified demeanour, and was politically savvy.

The day of Parks' trial — Monday, December 5, 1955 — the WPC distributed the 35,000
leaflets. 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."

It rained that day, but the black community persevered in their boycott. Some rode in
carpools, while others travelled in black-operated cabs that charged the same fare as
the bus, 10 cents. Most of the remainder of the 40,000 black commuters walked, some as
far as 20 miles (30 km). In the end, the boycott lasted for 381 days. Dozens of public buses
stood idle for months, severely damaging the bus transit company's finances, until the law
requiring segregation on public buses was lifted.

Some segregationists retaliated with terrorism. Black churches were burned or
dynamited. Martin Luther King's home was bombed in the early morning hours of
January 30, 1956, and E.D. Nixon's home was also attacked. However, the black
community's bus boycott marked one of the largest and most successful mass
movements against racial segregation. It sparked many other protests, and it catapulted
King to the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement.

Through her role in sparking the boycott, Rosa Parks played an important part in
internationalising the awareness of the plight of African Americans and the civil rights
struggle. King wrote in his 1958 book Stride Toward Freedom that 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 realises that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human
personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.'"

The Montgomery bus boycott was also the inspiration for the bus boycott in the
township of Alexandria, Eastern Cape of South Africa which was one of the key events in
the radicalisation of the black majority of that country under the leadership of the African
National Congress.

Browder v. Gayle

Immediately after the initiation of the bus boycott, legal strategists began to discuss the
need for a federal lawsuit to challenge city and state bus segregation laws, and
approximately two months after the boycott began, they reconsidered Claudette
Colvin's case. Attorneys Fred Gray, E.D. Nixon and Clifford Durr (a white lawyer who, with
his wife, Virginia, was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement and a former employer of
Parks) searched for the ideal case law to challenge the constitutional legitimacy of city
and state bus segregation laws. Parks' case wasn't used as the basis for the federal
lawsuit because, as a criminal case, it would have had to make its way through the state
criminal appeals process before a federal appeal could have been filed. City and state
officials could have delayed a final rendering for years. Furthermore, attorney Durr
believed it possible that the outcome would merely have been the vacating of Parks'
conviction, with no changes in segregation laws.

Gray researched for a better lawsuit, 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 had disputes involving the
Montgomery bus system the previous year. They all agreed to become plaintiffs in a civil
action law suit. Browder was a Montgomery housewife, Gayle the mayor of
Montgomery. On February 1, 1956, the case of Browder v. Gayle was filed in U.S. District
Court by Fred Gray. It was Browder v. Gayle that brought segregation to an end on
public buses.

On June 19, 1956, the U.S. District Court's 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, the United States Supreme Court
outlawed racial segregation on buses, deeming it unconstitutional. The court order
arrived in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 20, 1956, and the bus boycott ended
the next day. However, more violence erupted following the court order, as snipers fired
into buses and into King's home, and terrorists threw bombs into churches and into the
homes of many church ministers, including Martin Luther King Jr.,'s friend Ralph Abernathy.

Later years

After her arrest, Parks became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement but suffered
hardships 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. Parks travelled
and spoke extensively. In 1957, Raymond and Rosa Parks left Montgomery for Hampton,
Virginia; mostly because she was unable to find work, but also because of disagreements
with King and other leaders of Montgomery's struggling civil rights movement. In
Hampton, she found a job as a hostess in an inn at black Hampton Institute. Later that
year, after the urging of her brother and sister-in-law, Sylvester & Daisy, Rosa, her husband
Raymond, and her mother Leona McCauley, moved to Detroit, Michigan.

Parks worked as a seamstress until 1965 when African-American U.S. Representative
John Conyers hired her as a secretary and receptionist for his congressional office in
Detroit. She held this position until she retired in 1988. 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." Later in life,
Parks also served as a member of the Board of Advocates of the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America.

Rosa Parks and Elaine Eason Steele co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for
Self Development in February 1987, in honour of Rosa's husband, who died from cancer in
1977. The institute runs the "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours, which introduce young
people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country. In
1992, Parks published Rosa Parks: My Story, an autobiography aimed at younger readers
which details her life leading up to her decision not to give up her seat. In 1995, she
published her memoirs, titled Quiet Strength, which focuses on the role that her faith had
played in her life.

On August 30, 1994, Joseph Skipper, an African-American drug addict, attacked 81-year-
old Parks in her home. The incident sparked outrage throughout America. After his arrest,
Skipper said that he hadn't known he was in Parks' home but recognised 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. Skipper was arrested and charged
with various breaking and entering offences against Parks and other neighbourhood
victims. He admitted guilt and, on August 8, 1995, was sentenced to eight to 15 years in
prison.

A comedic scene in the 2002 film Barbershop featured a cantankerous barber, played
by Cedric the Entertainer, arguing with co-workers and shop patrons that other African
Americans before Parks had resisted giving up their seats in defiance of Jim Crow laws,
and that she'd received undeserved fame because of her status as an NAACP secretary.
Activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton launched a boycott against the film, contending it
was "disrespectful", but NAACP president Kweisi Mfume stated he thought the
controversy was "overblown." The scene also offended Parks, who boycotted the NAACP
2003 Image Awards ceremony, which Cedric hosted. "Barbershop" received nominations
in four awards categories that, including a "Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture"
nomination for Cedric. He didn't win in that category, however, but won an award for his
work as a supporting actor in the television series The Proud Family.

Lawsuits

In March 1999, a lawsuit was filed on Parks' behalf against American hip-hop duo OutKast
and LaFace Records, claiming that the group had illegally used Rosa Parks' name without
her permission for the song "Rosa Parks", the most successful radio single of OutKast's 1998
album Aquemini. The song's chorus, which Parks' legal defence felt was disrespectful to
Parks, is as follows: "Ah ha, hush that fuss / Everybody move to the back of the bus / Do
you want to bump and slump with us / We the type of people make the club get crunk."

The case was dismissed in November 1999 by U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Hackett.
In August 2000, Parks hired attorney Johnnie Cochran to help her appeal the district
court's decision. Cochran argued that the song didn't have First Amendment protection
because, although its title carried Parks' name, its lyrics were not about her. However, U.S.
District Judge Barbara Hackett upheld OutKast's right to use Parks' name in November
1999, and Parks took the case to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where some
charges were remanded for further trial.

Parks' attorneys and caretaker, Elaine Steele, refiled in August 2004, and named BMG,
Arista Records and LaFace Records as the defendants, asking for $5 billion in damages.
(Also named as defendants were several parties not directly connected to the songs,
including Barnes & Noble and Borders Group for selling the songs, and Gregory Dark and
Braddon Mendelson, the director and producer, respectively, of the 1998 music video.
The judge dismissed the music video producers from the case by the reason of
"fraudulent joinder," as these defendants had no connection to the case and there was
no justifiable reason for the plaintiff's attorneys to add them to the lawsuit.)

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 lawyer
was pursuing the case based on their own financial interest. "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."

The lawsuit was settled April 15, 2005. In the settlement agreement, OutKast and their
producer and recorded labels paid Parks an undisclosed cash settlement and agreed to
work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in creating
educational programs about the life of Rosa Parks. The record labels and OutKast
admitted to no wrongdoing. It isn't known whether Parks' legal fees were paid for from
her settlement money or by the record companies.

Death and funeral

Rosa Parks resided in Detroit until she died at the age of ninety-two on October 24, 2005,
about 19:00 EDT, in her apartment on the east side of the city. She had been diagnosed
the previous year with progressive dementia.

City officials in Montgomery and Detroit announced on October 27 2005 that the front
seats of their city buses would be reserved with black ribbons in honour of Parks until her
funeral. Parks' coffin was flown to Montgomery and taken in a horse-drawn hearse to the
St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, where she lay in repose at the altar,
dressed in the uniform of a church deaconess, on October 29 2005. A memorial service
was held there the following morning, and one of the speakers, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, said that if it hadn't been for Rosa Parks, she'd probably have never
become the Secretary of State. In the evening the casket was transported to
Washington, D.C., and taken, aboard a bus similar to the one in which she made her
protest, to lie in honour in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda (making her the first woman and
second African American ever to receive this honour). An estimated 50,000 people
viewed the casket there, and the event was broadcast on television on October 31
2005. This was followed by another memorial service at a different St. Paul AME church in
Washington on the afternoon of October 31 2005. For two days, she lay in repose at the
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

Parks' funeral service, seven hours long, was held on Wednesday, November 2 2005, at
the Greater Grace Temple Church. After the funeral service, an honour guard from the
Michigan National Guard laid the U.S. flag over the casket and carried it to a horse-
drawn hearse, which had been intended to carry it, in daylight, to the cemetery. 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.) Parks had
previously prepared and placed a headstone on the selected location with the
inscription "Rosa L. Parks, wife, 1913–."

Awards and honours

Parks received most of her national accolades very late in life, with relatively few awards
and honours being given to her until many decades after the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
In 1979, the National Association for the Advancement of coloured People awarded
Parks the Spingarn Medal, its highest honour, and she received the Martin Luther King Jr.
Award the next year. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1983
for her achievements in civil rights. 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."

On September 9, 1996, President Bill Clinton presented Parks with the Presidential Medal
of Freedom, the highest honour given by the U.S. Executive branch. In 1998, she became
the first recipient of the International Freedom Conductor Award given by the National
Underground Railroad Freedom centre. The next year, Parks was awarded the
Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S.

Legislative branch and also received the Detroit-Windsor International Freedom Festival
Freedom Award. Parks was a guest of President Bill Clinton during his 1999 State of the
Union Address. Also that year, Time magazine named Parks one of the 20 most influential
and iconic figures of the twentieth century. In 2000, her home state awarded her the
Alabama Academy of honour, as well as the first Governor's Medal of honour 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, Incorporated. The Rosa Parks Library and Museum on the campus of Troy
University in Montgomery, was dedicated to her on December 1, 2000. It is located on
the corner where Parks boarded the famed bus. The most popular items in the museum
are the interactive bus arrest of Mrs. Parks and 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. She also collaborated that year in a
TV movie of her life starring Angela Bassett.

On October 28 2005, the House of Representatives approved a resolution passed the
previous day by the United States Senate to honour Parks by allowing her body to lie in
honour in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. . Since the founding of the practise of lying in state in
the Rotunda in 1852, Parks was the 31st person, the first woman, the first American who
hadn't been a U.S. Government official, and the second non-government official (after
Frenchman Pierre L'Enfant). She was also the second black person to lie in honour, after
Jacob Chestnut, one of the two United States Capitol Police officers who were killed in
the 1998 Capitol shooting. The 30th and 32nd persons so honoured were former
presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, respectively.

On October 30 2005, President George W. Bush issued a proclamation ordering that all
flags on U.S. public areas both within the country and abroad be flown at half-staff on
the day of Parks' funeral. Metro Transit in King County, Washington placed stickers
dedicating the first forward-facing seat of all its buses in Parks' memory shortly after her
death, and the American Public Transportation Association declared December 1, 2005,
the 50th anniversary of her arrest, to be a "National Transit Tribute to Rosa Parks Day". On
that anniversary, President George W. Bush signed H. R. 4145, directing that a statue of
Parks be placed in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. In signing the
resolution directing the Joint Commission on the Library to do so, the President stated: »

On February 5, 2006, at Super Bowl XL, played at Detroit's Ford Field, Coretta Scott King
and Parks, who had been a long-time resident of "The Motor City", were remembered
and honoured by a moment of silence. It was noted that the honour was to show
respect for two women who had "helped make the nation as a whole great." The Super
Bowl was dedicated to their memory.

As part of an effort to shed the image left after the disastrous 1967 riot, in 1976 Detroit
renamed 12th Street "Rosa Parks Boulevard."

In the Los Angeles County metro rail system, the Imperial Highway/Wilmington station,
where the Blue Line connects with the Green Line, has been officially named the "Rosa
Parks Station". Nashville, Tennessee renamed MetroCenter Boulevard (8th Avenue North)
(US 41A and TN 12) in September 2007 as Rosa L. Parks Boulevard.

Elder spokeswoman and activist for her continual example of community service and for
her lifelong commitment to civil rights and non-violent social change. She was awarded
the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience award on September 26, 1992.

Rosa Parks Totally Explained

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2009 Educator's Calendar
2008 Educator's Calendar
2007 Educator's Calendar

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Harriet Tubman Totally Explained