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Post by Skyy on Oct 25, 2005 9:25:42 GMT -5
Rosa Parks has been called the "mother of the civil rights movement" and one of the most important citizens of the 20th century. Mrs. Parks was a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama when, in December of 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. The bus driver had her arrested. She was tried and convicted of violating a local ordinance. Speaking in 1992, Mrs. Parks said history too often maintains "that my feet were hurting and I didn't know why I refused to stand up when they told me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long." Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by an unknown clergyman named Martin Luther King, Jr., to national prominence and resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on city buses. Over the next four decades, she helped make her fellow Americans aware of the history of the civil rights struggle. This pioneer in the struggle for racial equality is the recipient of innumerable honors, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize. She is a living symbol of courage and determination and an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere. Mrs. Parks died Monday evening at her home of natural causes, with close friends by her side, said Gregory Reed, an attorney who represented her for the past 15 years. She was 92.
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Post by Journey2herpast on Oct 26, 2005 9:18:51 GMT -5
Detroit-Area Museum Honors Rosa Parks
October 26, 2005
DEARBORN, Mich. - Visitors streamed into the Henry Ford Museum for a glimpse of the bus that officials believe was the historic one Rosa Parks rode, now draped with purple-and-black crepe to mark her death.
Shortly after her death, museum officials moved the restored 1948 General Motors bus toward the center of the museum concourse. A display case later was placed next to the bus with the uniform worn by J.F. Blake, the driver who told Parks to leave her seat.
Jessie Daniels, 70, a student monitor and substitute teacher at a school on the museum campus, once lived in Montgomery, Ala. and took part in the bus boycott that followed Parks' arrest in December 1955.
"We were looking for change," he said. "Luckily for us, Rosa Parks decided to keep her seat on the bus that day."
As Americans remembered Parks' historic act of defiance, a family spokeswoman announced that public viewings would take place in both Montgomery, Ala. and Detroit before Parks' funeral.
A viewing was planned at St. Paul AME Church in Montgomery, Ala. on Saturday and Sunday, Karen Dumas, a spokeswoman for the Parks' family and charitable foundation, said Tuesday night.
A viewing also was scheduled Nov. 1 at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Dumas said, with funeral services on Nov. 2 at Greater Grace Temple.
The Henry Ford Museum purchased the rusty 36-passenger bus from a Chicago auction house in 2001 for $492,000. It had been sitting in a field for more than 30 years, said William Pretzer, the museum's curator of political history who led the acquisition.
Museum officials believe it was the one Parks rode because its number corresponds with a notation that was made by a former bus station manager in his scrapbook of newspaper clippings kept during and after the bus boycott.
The bus was restored with a $300,000 federal grant to look like it did on the day Parks boarded it, Pretzer said.
Every day, museum guides invite visitors on board the bus. On Tuesday, Megan McLean, 15, sat in the same seat the civil rights pioneer had refused to yield to a white man nearly a half-century ago.
"It was overpowering," the teenager said. "I kind of felt like I was really there for a minute."
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Post by AANBAN on Nov 3, 2005 9:15:51 GMT -5
Rest in Peace Ms. Parks.
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Post by peaches on Nov 10, 2005 10:27:59 GMT -5
RIP mama Parks.
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