[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 1]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 1028]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         IN HONOR OF ROSA PARKS

                                  _____
                                 

                         HON. LAURA RICHARDSON

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, February 6, 2012

  Ms. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the late 
Rosa Parks, whose extraordinary deeds and achievements performed with 
great moral and physical courage and quiet determination, make her one 
of the most consequential persons of the 20th Century.
  Rosa Parks, who was born 99 years ago today in Tuskegee, Alabama, 
ignited the modern civil rights movement in the United States in 
Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955, when she refused to give up 
her seat on a bus to a white man. Rosa Parks stood up for justice and 
equality by this simple act of sitting down. And her quiet courage and 
dedication to the cause of justice and equality led her to join Dr. 
Martin Luther King, Jr. and others in launching the Montgomery Bus 
Boycott, an act of civil disobedience that changed America, and forever 
coined Ms. Parks as the first lady of civil rights.
  Ms. Parks' act of quiet civil disobedience inspired similar protests, 
demonstrations, sit-ins, marches, and other non-violent direct action 
across the segregated south, including the ``Little Rock Nine'' in 
Little Rock, Arkansas in September 1957, where nine black students were 
blocked from entering the formerly all-white Central High School 
leading to government intervention; the famous ``Greensboro sit-in'' on 
February 1, 1960 where four black students refused to leave a 
Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth's lunch counter after being 
refused service; the Freedom Rides during the Spring and Summer of 1961 
in which young black and white students, referred to as ``freedom 
riders,'' began taking bus trips through the South to challenge Jim 
Crow practices banning integration in interstate transportation; and 
the 1965 ``March from Selma to Montgomery'' for voting rights, during 
which occurred ``Bloody Sunday,'' the event that shocked and horrified 
the Nation and led directly to the passage of the landmark Voting 
Rights Act of 1965.
  As a leading activist for civil rights and equality, Ms. Parks 
actively advocated for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 
was present at the signing into law of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by 
President Johnson.
  Ms. Parks continued her work for civil equality and rights and served 
on the staff of U.S. Representative John Conyers. Her strong belief in 
the constitutional principles of equality and freedom led her to 
establish the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development in 
1977. The institute strives to teach children throughout the U.S. about 
the history of their country and of the civil rights movement. Her 
efforts in the fight for civil rights earned her the Spingarn Medal 
from the NAACP, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, and the 
Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.
  Upon her death in 2005, Rosa Parks was the first woman and second 
non-U.S. government official granted the posthumous honor of lying in 
honor at the Capitol Rotunda. Hundreds of thousands of mourners came to 
pay their final respects to the ``First Lady of the Civil Rights 
Movement.''
  Now, a year before the anniversary of her 100th birthday, her work 
lives on as we continue to fight for justice and equality in this 
Nation. As Ms. Parks once said, ``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.''
  Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand here in honor and remembrance of 
Rosa Parks, a heroine of courage and a pioneer for civil rights in the 
history of this Nation. I ask my colleagues to join me for a moment of 
silence in memory of the great Rosa Parks.

                          ____________________