[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 23633]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO ROSA PARKS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Rosa Parks, 
who died yesterday at the age of 92.
  Some 50 years ago, Mrs. Parks took a stand for freedom by sitting 
down. She refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man. 
Mrs. Parks was arrested and convicted of violating Alabama's 
segregation laws. Her actions sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and 
toppled the Jim Crow law under which she had been convicted.
  Mrs. Parks was not seeking attention, was not trying to become a 
symbol at that moment of the civil rights movement. But by taking a 
stand against racial inequality, her arrest personalized the injustice 
to Americans of faith and strong belief, of all races, and personalized 
the humiliation of segregation laws.

                              {time}  2000

  Rosa Parks' courage and active defiance ignited the civil rights 
movement. Her understanding of equality and commitment to justice made 
her a gifted leader of that movement.
  Today we mourn the loss of Mrs. Parks. We honor her personal 
strength, her determination, as a civil rights leader and her vision of 
a Nation where freedom is denied to no man and to no woman. The memory 
of Rosa Parks inspires the fight for social and economic justice.

                          ____________________