[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 137 (Tuesday, October 25, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11782-S11784]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO ROSA LOUISE PARKS

  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, first, I appreciate the courtesies 
extended to me by the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania and the 
distinguished Senator from Iowa.

[[Page S11783]]

  I rise to pay tribute to one of the giants of American history. Today 
we honor the remarkable life and legacy of Rosa Parks, who died just 
last evening at the age of 92.
  The Detroit News today says:

       Courage in the face of oppression; resistance in the face 
     of injustice. That is the enduring legacy of Rosa Parks, 
     whose defiance on a racially segregated Montgomery, Ala., bus 
     lit the flame of the modern civil rights movement and 
     inspired freedom movements from South Africa to Poland.

  The Detroit Free Press today:

       When Rosa Parks refused to get up, an entire race of people 
     began to stand up for their rights as human beings. Her 
     refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man was a simple 
     act that took extraordinary courage in Montgomery, Ala., in 
     1955. It was a place where black people had no rights that 
     white people had to respect. It was a time when racial 
     discrimination was so common, many blacks never questioned 
     it. At least not out loud. But then came Rosa Louise Parks.

  I am so proud Rosa Parks was a resident of Michigan. We have claimed 
her for many years and are so proud that she has left her legacy to all 
of us, particularly in Detroit, MI.
  On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks left work in her hometown of 
Montgomery, AL, and boarded a bus headed for home. When the bus became 
crowded, she was ordered by the bus driver to give up her seat to a 
white male passenger. She refused. Rosa Parks was arrested, and 4 days 
later the Montgomery bus boycott began. The boycott lasted for over a 
year until the Montgomery buses were officially desegregated in 
December of 1956.
  Rosa Parks was a courageous woman who did what she believed was fair 
and right. She is a testament to the power of one individual willing to 
fight for their beliefs. Her actions set the civil rights movement in 
motion and set a precedent for protest without violence. We all owe a 
debt of gratitude to Rosa Parks for her contribution to freedom and 
justice for all men and women in this country. Truly, her actions 
changed the course of history.
  Rosa Parks moved to Detroit in 1957 and it became home for her for 
nearly 50 years. In 1977, she and Elaine Easton Steele founded the 
Raymond and Rosa Parks Institute for Self-Development in Detroit to 
offer guidance to young African-Americans. The institute's many 
programs include the annual Pathways to Freedom bus tour that exposes 
young African Americans to landmarks of the civil rights era.
  The people of Michigan take great pride in the fact that Rosa Parks 
became part of our community in our great State. She devoted her life 
to public service, to helping people, and to helping to serve as a role 
model for our children. She made such an impact on our country and on 
the people of the metro Detroit community that the actual bus where 
Rosa Parks made her defiant stand is now on display at the Henry Ford 
Museum in Dearborn, MI.
  Children from all over the world have come to see the bus that became 
this symbol of the civil rights movement. Nicknamed the Mother of Civil 
Rights, President Clinton awarded Rosa Parks the Presidential Medal of 
Freedom in 1996, the highest civilian award this country can bestow. 
Mrs. Parks also received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. Earlier 
this year, Senator Levin and I introduced a bill to name a Federal 
building in Detroit after Mrs. Parks. We think it is important that we 
recognize her in this way to thank her in some small way for her 
incredible contribution to our country. It is an honor she richly 
deserves, and I believe it is important that we pass this bill this 
week in the Senate, just as the House has passed the bill, so that we 
can together, in a unanimous way, say: Thank you, Rosa Parks.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I join others the world over in mourning 
the death and giving thanks for the life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. Someone 
once said that in the instance Rosa Parks refused to move, somewhere in 
the universe a gear in the machinery shifted. Jim Crow had finally met 
his match.
  Rosa Parks was an accomplished seamstress who helped us all see that 
America's great strength is the fact that we are one cloth sewn 
together in a splendid coat of many colors. It is often reported that 
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus that day in 
Montgomery, AL, because her feet were tired.
  That was not so. She said many times:

       I was not physically tired--or no more than I usually was 
     at the end of a working day. No, the only tired I was, was 
     tired of giving in.

  It would be more than a year before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 
Montgomery's segregated buses were unconstitutional.
  To this day, the Montgomery bus boycott remains the largest and most 
successful act of civil disobedience in the history of the United 
States of America, all inspired by this simple, courageous woman. For 
381 days, tens of thousands of hard-working middle class, lower class, 
and all classes of African Americans walked miles to work every day in 
the heat, in the cold, in the rain. Many of the boycotters, including 
Mrs. Parks and her husband Raymond, lost their jobs, but they never 
lost their faith. They persevered with courage and with dignity.
  In the end, they did not just change the law; they changed our 
Nation, and they changed the world. The image of Rosa Parks sitting 
quietly on that bus waiting to be arrested is etched forever in our 
national consciousness, but it is not simply refusing to give up her 
seat that made Rosa Parks so great. It was a refusal to give up hope, 
especially her hope in young people.
  In 1955, Mrs. Parks was the leader of the Montgomery NAACP local 
youth organization. It is one of the lesser known parts of her story 
that the evening she was arrested she was in the process of 
rejuvenating that youth group. Her dedication to the next generation is 
the reason she founded the Raymond and Rosa Parks Institute for Self-
Development in Detroit, MI. Her faith was tested, but it was never 
broken. After Mrs. Parks was robbed and beaten in her own home in 1992, 
she implored people ``not to read too much into the attack.''

  ``Young people need to be taught to respect and care for their 
elders.'' she said. ``Despite the violence and crime in our society, we 
should not let fear overwhelm us. We must remain strong. We must not 
give up hope; we can overcome.''
  This morning's Detroit Free Press has a wonderful story on Mrs. 
Parks' life and legacy. In it, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Damon Keith, a 
longtime friend of Mrs. Parks, recalls when another living icon of 
freedom, Nelson Mandela, visited Detroit in 1990.
  When he got off the plane, a long line of dignitaries was waiting to 
greet the great man. President Mandela scanned the line until his eyes 
rested on a tiny woman. ``He chanted Rosa, Rosa, Rosa Parks,'' Judge 
Keith recalls.
  President Mandela told Mrs. Parks that she was his inspiration during 
the long years he was jailed on Robbins Island, and that her example 
had inspired South Africa's freedom fighters. Later, in a 1993 speech 
to the NAACP, Nelson Mandela called Rosa Parks ``the David who 
challenged Goliath.''
  Ms. Johnnie Carr, Mrs. Parks' longtime friend, said Mrs. Parks always 
believed that the Montgomery bus boycott was ``ordained by God.'' It 
was meant to be. But it almost did not happen. In her autobiography, 
Mrs. Parks wrote that, had she not been so tired that day, she would 
have waited for the next bus, because she would have recognized the 
driver of the Number 7 bus as the same man who had put her off the bus 
years earlier for refusing to board through the back door.
  On that earlier occasion, in 1943, Mrs. Parks had just tried, 
unsuccessfully, to register to vote. Twelve years later--the morning 
after the long Montgomery bus boycott ended--Mrs. Parks again boarded 
the Number 7 bus, paid her fare, and took her seat in the front of the 
bus. By coincidence--or perhaps by divine design--the bus driver that 
day was the same man who had called the police to have her arrested 
more than a year earlier. His name was James Blake. And he lived in a 
little town call Equality, GA.
  The Detroit Free Press this morning quotes from one of the last 
interviews Rosa Parks gave. A decade ago, in an interview with that 
newspaper, Mrs. Parks was asked how she hoped to be remembered. She 
replied, ``I'd like people to say that I'm a person that always wanted 
to be free, and wanted it not only for myself--freedom for all human 
beings.''
  That is a great tribute to a great lady who we remember today.
  I yield the floor to the chairman of the committee.

[[Page S11784]]

  Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Senator from Illinois for yielding. Before 
proceeding to his amendment, I would like to commend the Senator from 
Michigan and the Senator from Illinois for their comments about the 
great leadership of Rosa Parks to the civil rights movement, and to 
associate myself with those comments.
  I thank the Senator from Illinois.

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