Left: This undated photo shows Rosa Parks riding on the Montgomery Area Transit System bus. Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus on Dec. 1, 1955, and started a boycott that led to a federal court ruling against segregation in public transportation. (AP Photo)
	Above: The Rev. Jesse Jackson touches Rosa Parks’ casket during a funeral service in Detroit. (AP Photo/Detroit Free Press, Regina H. Boone)

Rosa Parks, Mother of  Civil Rights Movement, Dead at 92

The woman who changed America by sitting down for her rights is dead. Rosa Parks died October 24. She died of natural causes at her home in Detroit, Michigan. She was 92.

Parks was called “the mother of the modern day civil rights movement.” She was honored by being the first woman to lie in state under the Capitol dome in Congress in Washington, D.C. She also was only the second black person to be honored that way.

People from around the world came to Washington to pay tribute to Parks. Among the mourners were government leaders, celebrities and ordinary people.

Parks’ act of civil disobedience took place 50 years ago. She is given credit for helping to reduce segregation in the United States. Segregation is a policy that keeps people apart based on their race.\ 

Refused to move to the back of the bus

Parks got on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955. The city required blacks to ride in the back of the bus. Parks sat near the front of the bus.

When a white man got on the bus, the bus driver told her she had to give up her seat to the white man. Parks refused. The driver had her arrested.

Parks was convicted of violating segregation laws. She was fined $10.

The incident led to many protests against racial discrimination and segregation in this country. The incident also led to a bus boycott that lasted 381 days. For more than a year, 50,000 people in Montgomery stopped riding the city buses. They walked miles to school and to their places of work, rather than to ride the bus. 

Martin Luther King, Jr., led the protests

The arrest also helped bring attention to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who became known as one of the nation’s foremost civil rights leaders. He was chosen to lead the protests against the arrest. King was then a 26-year-old minister of a Baptist church in Montgomery.

He was shot to death in 1968. His birthday has since been declared a national holiday.

Many versions of Park’s arrest have been told. But she said years later that she had planned the act ahead of time.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is an organization that fights for the civil rights of people. The NAACP has local chapters across much of the nation.

Parks and her husband, Raymond, had been members of the NAACP chapter in Montgomery. The group selected Parks to protest the law that made blacks ride in the back of the bus.

Years later, Parks said she agreed to get arrested because she felt she had a right to be treated like any other passenger. She said black people like herself “...had endured that kind of treatment for too long.”

Moved to Detroit after threats on her life

Parks and her husband moved to Detroit in 1957. They said their lives were threatened in Alabama. They also had trouble finding jobs after the arrest. Rosa Parks was a seamstress. Her husband was a barber.

Parks started working as an aide in the Detroit office of Michigan Congressman John Confers in 1965. She retired in 1988. She was known to be a humble, quiet person. Yet, she changed a nation.

Parks was not the only person to fight for the rights of black people. Many of the earlier fighters never became as well-known as Parks or King, but they did their part to make the nation better.