ROSA LOUISE PARKS
(4 February 1913 – 24 October 2005) is internationally recognized as the “mother of the modern civil rights movement”. Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white male passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on 1 December 1955, triggered the Montgomery bus boycott on 5 December. Because of their activism with others to abolish “Jim Crow’’ laws, Mrs. Parks and her husband Raymond had threats against their lives and could not find work. They moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1957 where she continued her activism by working with the U.S. Congressman John Conyers. In 1987 she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development with longtime friend Ms. Elaine Eason Steele. Mrs. Parks received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton. She also received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. At her death, her body was laid in honour in the Rotunda in the U.S. Capitol; she was the first woman and the second African-American civilian to be so honoured.
