[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 142 (Tuesday, November 1, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2238-E2239]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  HONORING THE LIFE OF MRS. ROSA PARKS

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, November 1, 2005

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the courageous contributions 
and civil services of Mrs. Rosa Parks, who peacefully left the world on 
Monday, October 24, 2005 in Detroit, Michigan, at the age of 92.
  As I look back at the struggles of African Americans, I am astounded 
by the fire that Mrs. Parks ignited:
  On December 1, 1955, Mrs. Parks refused to give up her seat to a 
white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus.
  On December 5, 1955, she led a boycott by all colored people on the 
Montgomery buses, which lasted for 381 days.
  On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Alabama's State 
and local laws requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional. Other 
events continued that challenged the U.S. Constitution: The 
desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, the 
desegregation of Woolworth's lunch counter at North Carolina 
Agricultural and Technical College, and the desegregation of the 
University of Mississippi.
  Nine years later, the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 
1964, prohibiting discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, 
religion, or national origin which provides the Federal Government with 
the powers to enforce desegregation.
  Mrs. Rosa Parks was instrumental in changing the social and political 
climate of the United States of America. Her action has inspired 
Americans of all races and backgrounds to stand up for our basic human 
rights. She has taught us the power of determination and perseverance. 
Mrs. Parks was an activist who did not seek public attention. After the 
civil rights movement, Mrs. Parks continued to give back to the 
community. In 1987, she and her late husband, Raymond Parks, founded 
the Institute for Self-Development, which prepares young African-
Americans for leadership positions in the workplace and the community. 
A subdivision of the Institute, called Pathways of Freedom, allows 
groups of teens to follow the Underground Railroad and visit the 
historical sites of the Civil Rights Movement. Her act of defiance 
against a powerful system showed each of us the importance of 
everything we do and the impact that our own acts of courage can have. 
Mrs. Parks lived a long and full life. She has left us physically, but 
will remain spiritually as she will be remembered for generations to 
come. Following, is a CNN report of Mrs. Rosa Park's life.

Civil Rights Icon Rosa Parks Dies at 92--Long Known as the ``Mother of 
                      the Civil Rights Movement''

       Rosa Parks, whose act of civil disobedience in 1955 
     inspired the modern civil rights movement, died Monday in 
     Detroit, Michigan. She was 92.
       Parks' moment in history began in December 1955 when she 
     refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in 
     Montgomery, Alabama.
       Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system by 
     blacks that was organized by a 26-year-old Baptist minister, 
     the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

[[Page E2239]]

       The boycott led to a court ruling desegregating public 
     transportation in Montgomery, but it wasn't until the 1964 
     Civil Rights Act that all public accommodations nationwide 
     were desegregated.
       Facing regular threats and having lost her department store 
     job because of her activism, Parks moved from Alabama to 
     Detroit in 1957. She later joined the staff of U.S. Rep. John 
     Conyers, a Michigan Democrat.
       Conyers, who first met Parks during the early days of the 
     civil rights struggle, recalled Monday that she worked on his 
     original congressional staff when he first was elected to the 
     House of Representatives in 1964.
       ``I think that she, as the mother of the new civil rights 
     movement, has left an impact not just on the Nation, but on 
     the world,'' he told CNN in a telephone interview. ``She was 
     a real apostle of the nonviolence movement.''
       He remembered her as someone who never raised her voice--an 
     eloquent voice of the civil rights movement.
       ``You treated her with deference because she was so quiet, 
     so serene--just a very special person,'' he said, adding that 
     ``there was only one'' Rosa Parks.
       Gregory Reed, a longtime friend and attorney, said Parks 
     died between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. of natural causes. He called 
     Parks ``a lady of great courage.''
       Parks co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for 
     Self Development to help young people pursue educational 
     opportunities, get them registered to vote and work toward 
     racial peace.
       ``As long as there is unemployment, war, crime and all 
     things that go to the infliction of man's inhumanity to man, 
     regardless--there is much to be done, and people need to work 
     together,'' she once said.
       Even into her 80s, she was active on the lecture circuit, 
     speaking at civil rights groups and accepting awards, 
     including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the 
     Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.
       ``This medal is encouragement for all of us to continue 
     until all have rights,'' she said at the June 1999 ceremony 
     for the latter medal.
       Parks was the subject of the documentary ``Mighty Times: 
     The Legacy of Rosa Parks,'' which received a 2002 Oscar 
     nomination for best documentary short.
       In April, Parks and rap duo OutKast settled a lawsuit over 
     the use of her name on a CD released in 1998.

                              Bus Boycott

       She was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on 
     February 4, 1913. Her marriage to Raymond Parks lasted from 
     1932 until his death in 1977.
       Parks' father, James McCauley, was a carpenter, and her 
     mother, Leona Edwards McCauley, a teacher.
       Before her arrest in 1955, Parks was active in the voter 
     registration movement and with the National Association for 
     the Advancement of Colored People, where she also worked as a 
     secretary in 1943.
       At the time of her arrest, Parks was 42 and on her way home 
     from work as a seamstress. She took a seat in the front of 
     the black section of a city bus in Montgomery. The bus filled 
     up and the bus driver demanded that she move so a white male 
     passenger could have her seat. ``The driver wanted us to 
     stand up, the four of us. We didn't move at the beginning, 
     but he says, `Let me have these seats.' And the other three 
     people moved, but I didn't,'' she once said. When Parks 
     refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her. 
     As the officer took her away, she recalled that she asked, 
     `Why do you push us around?'' The officer's response: ``I 
     don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest.'' 
     She added, ``I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that 
     it was the very last time that I would ever ride in 
     humiliation of this kind.''
       Four days later, Parks was convicted of disorderly conduct 
     and fined $14. That same day, a group of blacks founded the 
     Montgomery Improvement Association and named King, the young 
     pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as its leader, and 
     the bus boycott began.
       For the next 381 days, blacks--who according to Time 
     magazine had comprised two-thirds of Montgomery bus riders--
     boycotted public transportation to protest Parks' arrest and 
     in turn the city's Jim Crow segregation laws. Black people 
     walked, rode taxis and used carpools in an effort that 
     severely damaged the transit company's finances. The mass 
     movement marked one of the largest and most successful 
     challenges of segregation and helped catapult King to the 
     forefront of the civil rights movement.
       The boycott ended on November 13, 1956, after the U.S. 
     Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that Montgomery's 
     segregated bus service was unconstitutional.
       Parks' act of defiance came one year after the Supreme 
     Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision that led to the 
     end of racial segregation in public schools.
       U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a Democrat, told CNN 
     Monday he watched the 1955-56 Montgomery drama unfold as a 
     teenager and it inspired him to get active in the civil 
     rights movement.
       ``It was so unbelievable that this woman--this one woman--
     had the courage to take a seat and refuse to get up and give 
     it up to a white gentleman. By sitting down, she was standing 
     up for all Americans,'' he said.

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