“Each person must live their life as a model for others.”
– Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005)
February 4
(Editor’s Note: We’re thrilled to be commemorating Rosa Parks in our inaugural profile, and can’t help but notice the parallels between Parks and the boycotters in Montgomery, Alabama and the huge outpouring of support this past week for Planned Parenthood when Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced its decision to withdraw support: a group of well-organized people came together to spur change.)
Rosa Parks was born on this day, February 4, in 1913. She’s known as the “Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement.”
According to Biography.com, Parks came to prominence inadvertently when her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus on December 1, 1955 led to a city-wide bus boycott. She was arrested and found guilty at her trial several days later.
To commemorate her arrest and to protest the city’s policies, on December 5, the African-American community organized a boycott of the Montgomery bus system, creating the “Montgomery Improvement Association” (MIA) and choosing a young minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as the leader. The boycott lasted 381 days and resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that led to the end of racial segregation on public buses.
Parks went on to be a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement in the US, as well as the Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa. In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Rosa Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the U.S. executive branch. A year later, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch. And in 1999, Time Magazine named Rosa Parks to their list of top 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
Parks died on October 24, 2005, at the age of 92 in her home in Detroit, Michigan. There were several memorial services, including lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C. where an estimated 50,000 people came to pay their respects.
Learn more about Rosa Parks @ Biography.com and RosaParks.org.
Rosa Parks showed us how one person can make a difference. What do you see in the world that needs changing? How can YOU make a difference? Please feel free to share your thoughts or comments…
What has the real effect of the civil rights movement been on women? You might not want to ask the over 30,000 white women who are victims of interracial rape annually.
@Mom in Mich: those 30,000 interracial rape cases point towards sickness of men’s mind, irrespective of their race, creed, or color!
Committing a sin like rape is the worst form of a mental sickness for me! 🙁