apothecary Posted October 25, 2005 http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200510/s1490229.htm African-American civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955 sparked a movement to end legally imposed racial segregation in the United States, has died at the age of 92, local media reports say. She died at her home in Detroit, Michigan, newspaper the Detroit News reports. Shirley Kaigler, Ms Parks' lawyer, says she died while taking a nap early on Monday evening surrounded by a small group of friends and family members. "She just fell asleep and didn't wake up," Ms Kaigler said. The cause of death was not immediately known. Ms Parks had fought a long battle with dementia. Ms Kaigler says Ms Parks was at home in an apartment complex overlooking the Detroit River and the border with Ontario, Canada, when she died. Ms Parks's health had been declining since the late 1990s. By then, she had stopped giving interviews and rarely appeared in public. In 1995, she said, "I'd like people to say I'm a person who always wanted to be free and wanted it not only for myself; freedom is for all human beings". Civil rights movement Ms Parks's defiance aboard the municipal bus sparked the US civil rights movement and helped Martin Luther King Jr gain national prominence. She was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Ms Parks was one of the first women to join the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and served as the group's secretary from 1943 to 1956. African-American leaders in Montgomery, Alabama's profoundly segregated capital, were eager to launch a black boycott of city buses to lift the city ordinance barring blacks from sitting with whites. Ms Parks allowed them to use her arrest as the catalyst. On December 1, 1955, Ms Parks was jailed and fined $14 for refusing to give up her seat in the middle of the bus to a white man who wanted to sit in her row. Front rows were for whites only, and blacks had to abandon their seats in other rows when all front-row seats were taken and whites were left standing. Bus boycott Her arrest launched the 382-day Montgomery bus boycott that ran from December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956. During that time, black workers walked to their jobs or paid black-owned taxi drivers 10 cents - the same amount as the bus fare - to get to work. The protest ended only after the US Supreme Court ruled on November 13, 1956 that segregation on city buses was unconstitutional. That ruling encouraged others to seek an end to racial injustice around the country. The boycott was led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, then a 27-year-old Baptist minister in Montgomery. Reverend King's success as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association established the future Nobel Peace Prize winner as a national civil rights figure. Rights career Ms Parks lost her job as a seamstress as a result of the protests. In 1957, she moved to Detroit, Michigan and remained active in the civil rights movement. From 1967 to 1988, she worked on the Detroit staff of Democratic Congressman John Conyers. In 1996, then-president Bill Clinton awarded Ms Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honour, bestowed on individuals who have made important contributions to the country. She received the NAACP's Spingarn Medal for her achievements in civil rights in 1979. In an autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story, published in 1992, the woman known as the mother of the civil rights movement explained that it was not fatigue from a day's work that had prompted her to stay seated in 1955. "The only tired I was, was tired of giving in," Ms Parks said. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Legba Posted October 25, 2005 "...mournin'; celebration. the blues are back in town" RIP Rosa. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
