When Rosa Parks refused to get up, an entire race of people began to
stand up for their rights as human beings.
It was a simple act that took extraordinary courage in Montgomery,
Ala., in 1955.
This gentle giant, whose quietness belied her toughness, became the
catalyst for a movement that broke the back of legalized segregation in
the United States, gave rise to the astounding leadership of the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr., and inspired fighters for freedom and justice
throughout the world.
advertisement
Parks, the beloved mother of the civil-rights movement, died Monday.
But already it's evident that her spirit lives in hundreds of thousands
of people inspired by her unwavering commitment to work for a better
world - a commitment that continued even after age and failing health
slowed her in the 1990s.
In death as in life, she touched the well known and the little known
people of the world.
Parks' health had been declining since the late 1990s. She had stopped
giving interviews by then and rarely appeared in public. When she did,
she only smiled or spoke short, barely audible responses.
In one of her last lengthy interviews with the Detroit Free Press in
1995, she spoke of what she would like people to say about her after
she passed away.
"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," she
said during an interview from the pastor's study of St. Matthew African
Methodist Episcopal Church, a small congregation she joined upon moving
to Detroit in 1957.
While it's known worldwide that her refusal to give up her bus seat
sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, it's less well known that Parks had
a long history of trying to make life better for Black people.
It was a desire embedded in her from childhood by her grandfather - her
mother's father with whom she lived when she was growing up. He taught
his children and grandchildren not to put up with mistreatment. "It was
passe
.
|
