= Page 10 The Minority Voice Newspaper Oct. 21 - Nev 4, 2005_ Rosa Parks, matriarch of civil_ Catalyst of U.S. drive for racial eqDETROIT - Rosa Parks, whoserefusal to give up her bus seat to awhite man sparked the modern civilrights movement, died Mondayevening. She was92.Mrs. Parks died at her home duringthe evening of natural causes, withclose friends by her side, saidGregory Reed, an attorney whorepresented her for the past 15years. .Mrs. Parks was 42 when shecommitted an act of defiance in 1955that was to change the course ofAmerican history and earn her thetitle omother of the civil rightsmovement. ? .At that time, Jim Crow laws in placesince the post-Civil War Recon-struction required separation of theraces in buses, restaurants andpublic accommodations throughoutthe South, while legally sanctionedracial discrimination kept blacks outof many jobs and neighborhoods inthe North.The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress,an active member of the localchapter of the National Associationfor the Advancement of ColoredPeople, was riding on a city busDec. 1, 1955, when a white mandemanded her seat.Fined $14 .Mrs. Parks refused, despite rulesrequiring blacks to yield their seatsto whites. Two black Montgomerywomen had been arrested earlierthat year on. the same charge, butMrs. Parks was jailed. She also wasfined $14, .U.S. Rep. John Conyers, in whoseoffice Parks worked for more than 20years, remembered the civil rightsleader Monday night as someoneWhose impact on the world wasimmeasurable, but who never sawherself that way. oEverybody wanted to explain RosaParks and wanted to teach RosaParks, but Rosa Parks wasn Tt veryinterested in that, ? he said. oShewanted to them to understand thegovernment and to understand theirrights and the Constitution thatpeople are still trying to perfecttoday. ?Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatricksaid he felt a personal tie to the civilrights icon: oShe stood up bysitting down. I'm only standing herebecause of her. ?Speaking in 1992, Mrs. Parks saidhistory too often maintains othat myfeet were hurting and I didn Tt knowwhy I refused to stand up whenthey told me. But the real reason of_ minister, the Rev. Martin LutherKing Jr., who later earned the NobelPeace Prize for his work. oAt the time I was arrested I had noidea it would turn into this, ? Mrs,Parks said 30 years later. oIt was justa day like any other day. The onlything that made it significant wasthat the masses of the people joinedin. ?The Montgomery bus boycott,which came one year after theSupreme Court Ts landmark declara-tion that separate schools for blacksand whites were oinherentlyunequal, ? marked the start of themodern civil rights movement.The movement culminated in the1964 federal Civil Rights Act, whichbanned racial discrimination inpublic accommodations.After taking her public stand forcivil rights, Mrs. Parks had troublefinding work in Alabama. Amid threats and harassment, she and herhusband Raymond moved toDetroit in 1957. She worked as anaide in the Detroit office of Demo-cratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers from1965 until retiring in 1988. RaymondParks died in 1977.Mrs. Parks became a revered figurein Detroit, where a street and middleschool were named for her and apapier-mache likeness of her wasfeatured in the city Ts ThanksgivingDay Parade.Mrs. Parks said upon retiring fromher job with Conyers that shewanted to devote more time to theRosa and Raymond Parks Institutefor Self Development. The institute,incorporated in 1987, is devoted todeveloping leadership among initiating them into the strugglefor civil rights. oe oRosa Parks: My Story ? was« published in February 1992. In1994 she brought out oQuietStrength: The Faith, the Hope andthe Heart of a Woman Who "_-Changed a Nation, ? and in 1996 acollection of letters called oDearMrs. Parks: A Dialogue With-Today Ts Youth. ?She was among the civil rightsleaders who addressed theMillion Man March in October1995.In 1996, she received the Presi.dential Medal of Freedom, :awarded to civilians makingoutstanding contributions toAmerican life. In 1999, she wasawarded the Congressional GoldMedal, the nation Ts highestcivilian honor.Mrs. Parks received dozens of otherawards, ranging from induction intothe Alabama Academy of Honor toan NAACP Image Award for her1999 appearance on CBS T oTouchedby an Angel. ? °The fateful conversationThe Rosa Parks Library andMuseum opened in November 2000in Montgomery. The museumfeatures a 1955-era bus and a videothat recreates the conversation that -preceded Parks T arrest. oAre you going to stand up? ? thebus driver asked. oNo, ? Parks answered. oWell, by God, I Tm going to haveyou arrested, ? the driver said. oYou may do that, ? Parks re-sponded.Mrs. Parks T later years were notwithout difficult moments.In 1994, Mrs. Parks T home wasinvaded by a 28-year-old man whobeat her and took $53. She wastreated at a hospital and released.The man, Joseph Skipper, pleadedguilty, blaming the crime on his drugproblem.The Parks Institute struggledfinancially since its inception. Thecharity Ts principal activity " theannual Pathways to Freedom bustour taking students to the sites ofkey events in the civil rightsmovement " routinely cost moremoney than the institute couldraise.Mrs. Parks lost a 1999 lawsuit thatsought to prevent the hip-hop duoOutKast from using her name as thetitle of a Grammy-nominated song.In 2000, she threatened legal actionagainst an Oklahoma man whorights, dies at 92 _lity lived in Detro try to give them an inspiration, an oFrom the M T Voice Newspaper Archives T, .. Shown above aremembers of the Gatlin Family and other family members. Shownabove is Mothers Hattie Carndol, Carrie Jones, Evelyn Lassistin,Minnie Gatlin, Ellis Brown, Sally Streeter, Carrie Gatlin, Darwinphoto by Jim Rousemy not standing up was | felt that Ihad a right to be treated as anyother passenger. We had enduredthat kind of treatment for too long. ?Her arrest triggered a 381 -dayboycott of the bus system orga-nized by a then little-known Baptist(Teapot) Vines, and Olga Myers.name rights to www.rosaparks.com.After losing the OutKast lawsuit,Reed, her attorney, said Mrs. Parks ohas once again suffered the painsof exploitation. ? A later suit againstOutKast Ts record company wassettled out of court. ©She was born Rosa Louise ©McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, iti ~Tuskegee; Ala. Family illnessinterrupted her high school educa- || ===tion, but after she married Raymond}: gp oeParks in 1932, he encouraged her Hamburgersand she earned a diploma in 1934. | "= yestaak..He also inspired her to become ; "involved in the NAACP.Looking back in 1988, Mrs. Parkssaid she worried that black youngpeople took legal equality for ¢ . en agranted: ~ 7 soothe Beat T A more ¢ attitude T ]Older blacks, shé said ohave tried toshield young people from what we Aci nalshave suffered. And in so doing, we a eeseem to have a more complacent aeattitude. " . q oWe must double and redouble ourefforts to try to say to our. youth, toincentive and the will to study ourheritage and to know what it meansto be black in America today. ?At a celebration in her honor that _same year, she said: oI am leavingthis legacy to all of you ... to bringace. iustice, equality, love andWhen Rosa Parks refused togive up her seat on a bus inMontgomery, Ala., her action low? és 4sparked the modern civil rights bCateq ~?"? - Ny Secsmovement. NBC Ts Lester Holt he | _ "narrates the story of the move- Ca rol in a East Cente rTees} Directly Across From Ryan Steak HouseSuite #24ipen Mon-Sat 10AM- 8PM"Telephone (252) 756-0044° WOOW (340AMAround here, businesses have plenty of power,In fact, we provide it to them, 24/7, And, because of our consistentperformance, we've earned a solid reputation for reliability.In the business world and in the community. 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