Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks Dead At 92

ClickOnDetroit ^ | October 24 2005

[jmc1969]

Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks has died, Local 4 has learned.

Parks, 92, reportedly died around 7 p.m. Monday at St. John Hospital on Detroit's east side.

Parks' refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955 landed her in jail and sparked a bus boycott that is considered the start of the modern civil rights movement. The bus is on display at the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn.

Parks, was born on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala. She lived in Detroit.

[Bella_Bru]

G-d bless your grandmother. To live so long and to see so much....I really hope you have had a chnace (or someone in your family has had the chance) to talk with her and get an oral history from her about everything she has seen!

[Bella_Bru]

She was a true hero who stood up to government sponsored bigotry. May she rest in peace.

[FranklySpeaking]

Awards and honors
(quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks )

"In 1979, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People awarded Parks the Spingarn Award, its highest honor, and she received the Martin Luther King Sr. Award the next year. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1983 for her achievements in civil rights. In 1987, she created the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development to help youth by job training and helping goal setting. Parks received the Rosa Parks Peace Prize in 1994 in Stockholm, Sweden, followed by the highest U.S. civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1996. In 1998, she became the first awardee for the International Freedom Conductor Award given by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. The next year Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, as well as the Detroit-Windsor International Freedom Festival Freedom Award. In 2000, her home state awarded her the Alabama Academy of Honor as well as the first Governor's Medal of Honor for Extraordinary Courage. Also, in 1999, Time magazine named Parks one of the top twenty most influential and iconic figures of the twentieth century. She was also awarded two dozen honorary doctorates from universities worldwide and was made an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

In 1992 she published a children's book, Rosa Parks: My Story, a chronology explaining her life up until her refusal to give up her seat. This was followed by her memoirs Quiet Strength. The Rosa Parks Library and Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, was dedicated to her in November 2001. The most popular item in the museum is 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. That year she also participated in a TV movie of her life starring Angela Bassett".

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A great American Hero.

Rest in Peace, Rosa.

[FranklySpeaking]

The bus is on display at the Henry Ford Museum

[La Enchiladita]

Farewell, Rosa, an American hero for our time and all time; right up there with Harriet Tubman. God bless you, dear, and speed your soul to Heaven.

I am reminiscing about the civil rights era. What a different time that was...

[kenth]

God rest her soul. Thank you Ms. Parks.

[BlackRain]

"So you're parroting the KKK argument of old."

Hey, you are barking up the wrong tree there fella.

I merely pointed out that New England Democrats started the investigation of the civil rights movement and Communism.

Are you stating that Robert F. Kennedy and J.E. Hoover where in the KKK then?

"On October 10, 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy committed what is widely viewed as one of the most ignominious acts in modern American history: he authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to begin wiretapping the telephones of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy believed that one of King's closest advisers was a top-level member of the American Communist Party, and that King had repeatedly misled Administration officials about his ongoing close ties with the man."

There is nothing wrong with ending segration but you have your blinders on to history if you don't believe the American Communist Party was involved in its organization.

Stanley David Levison provided important financial, organizational, and public relations services for King and the SCLC. Levison would later be described by King's widow, Coretta Scott King, as a "devoted and trusted" friend of her husband. Levison assisted King in organizational matters and political strategy, wrote some of his speeches, and advised in hiring personnel to staff King's Southern Christian. Leadership Conference (SCLC).

That's a hard cold fact, Jack.

On a side note, the FBI wiretaps on the civil rights organizations to include ML King will be released to the public in 2027. Should interesting from a historical standpoint to see what they contain.

[dolphin558]

Yes, her "small" act of defiance changed the landscape of this country. May God bless her soul.

[Godebert]

"No woman has advanced human rights with the dignity of Rosa Parks except Princess Dianna and Mother Teresa. But that's another story ........ "

Princess Dianna? Gimme a break. She spent most of her life boozing and whoring at cocktail parties and polo matches. To mention her in the same sentence as Rosa Parks and Mother Teresa is outrageous.

[MikefromOhio]

There is nothing wrong with ending segration but you have your blinders on to history if you don't believe the American Communist Party was involved in its organization.

Try this. I DON'T care. We aren't talking about that. WE ARE talking about a GREAT AMERICAN.

[publana]

They are just a few compared to the whole. They reveal their lack of intelligence in their statements. I get a kick out of watching them post and burning a scarlet "I'm so stupid that I don't know I'm stupid" sign into their foreheads.

They are irrelevant and not worth a reply. ;)

[Theodore R.]

I wonder why she picked Detroit to retire

Remember this summer Detroit was voted the "most liberal" city in all of the USA. I think she lived there because she had worked as an aide to the Congressman Conyers, or another popular member if not Conyers.

[Theodore R.]

Wasn't Henry Ford's best friend his fellow Democrat Thomas Edison?

[publana]

When my daughter was young, she would not read a book. I brought book after book home in an attempt to coax her to read. I was horrified at the time and very afraid that she would grow up to be an illiterate, or worse... hanging out in DUmmieland.

I brought home "Rosa Parks: My Story" for another child that was assigned the book for a book report in February during Black History Month. My daughter picked it up off the coffee table where the other child left it, thumbed through the pages, then read it voraciously, making many comments and asking questions. She read the book several times and the book still resides in its place of honor on her nightstand. My daughter has been a bookworm ever since.

My daughter's personality also changed from reading the book. She went from a timid, introverted child to a "Don't tread on me" personality overnight. Rosa's book did in one night what I had spent several years trying to do... teach my child courage and conviction.

Thank you, dear Rosa. God bless you.

[B-Chan]

Rosa Parks was an American heroine. I am certain that she and my personal hero Booker T. Washington are together in Heaven.

[Republican Wildcat]

No, she did not. And she also did not use her position for partisan purposes. She sent a letter to J.C. Watts asking him not to leave Congress, wanting blacks holding office in both parties.

[A CA Guy]

She really showed her age towards the end, rest in peace Rosa Parks.

[rdb3]

Wasn't Henry Ford's best friend his fellow Democrat Thomas Edison?

That I don't know.

If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.

[rdb3]

G-d bless your grandmother. To live so long and to see so much....I really hope you have had a chnace (or someone in your family has had the chance) to talk with her and get an oral history from her about everything she has seen!

Thank you. And believe me, I've received quite a history from her. Like a lot of really old folx, she can't remember what happened five minutes ago, but she can recall something from 1939 like it was yesterday. It's been many moons since September 21, 1914, but she's still here.

If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.

[MikefromOhio]

Wasn't Henry Ford's best friend his fellow Democrat Thomas Edison?

I don't know about "best" friend, but they were friends according to my grandfather, whose father knew both men and worked for Ford in Detroit around the turn of the century. My grandfather passed in 2001. He was born in 1904.....