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Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks dies at 92
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-25 11:13 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.
A visitor to the Henry Ford Museum looks
inside the actual bus on which civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks refused to
give up her seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala. in 1955, Saturday,
Dec. 1, 2001, at the museum in Dearborn,
Mich.[AP] | "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."
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