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Rosa Parks DETROIT — Rosa Parks, whose refusal a half-century ago to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Alabama launched a new era in the civil rights movement, died Monday, the office of U.S. Rep. John Conyers said. She was 92
Parks' act of disobedience against the segregation laws of the South united blacks behind a victorious boycott of the Montgomery bus system and led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling against institutionalized racism.
It also vaulted into national prominence a young minister who led the boycott and would soon inspire a nationwide movement for equal rights for blacks: Martin Luther King Jr.
"Rosa Parks, the mother of the modern civil rights movement, was an advocate for non-violence at a time when violence penetrated every level of our society," Conyers, D-Mich., said earlier this year. Parks served on Conyers' staff for more than 20 years, starting in 1965.
On Dec. 1, 1955, Parks, a 42-year-old seamstress at a department store, boarded a bus in Montgomery and took a seat in the first row of the "colored" section.
A city ordinance required blacks to give up their seats when whites needed them. When several white passengers boarded that day, black riders gave them their seats. But Parks refused.
The bus driver had her arrested, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People fought the charge.
Parks was not the first to refuse to give up her seat. But she was the first to challenge the law in court with the backing of the NAACP, of which she was a member.
On the day she went to court the following Monday, virtually the entire black ridership of the Montgomery bus system refused to ride in protest. Parks was convicted and fined, but a new tactic was born. Thousands of blacks walked to work and school or took black-owned taxis. Buses ran their routes with few passengers, given that blacks made up more than two-thirds of the bus system's riders. Religious and political leaders, some of whom were white, formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to keep the boycott going.
Asked to lead the boycott was King, the 26-year-old, newly appointed pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
"If we are wrong, justice is a lie," he said in a speech at the time.
For 381 days, 42,000 blacks refused to ride public transportation in the city. The U.S. Supreme Court not only overturned Parks' fine but ordered an end to the segregation in the Montgomery bus system.
On Dec. 21, 1956, King and other civil rights leaders were the first to board a city bus as equals with whites.
"We thought the boycott would last four days," said Ralph Abernathy, a pastor and organizer of the boycott. "We only wanted improved segregation. The people wanted it all."
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