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April 01, 2009

Rosa Parks Remembered

Rosa Park, an icon for the Civil Rights movement passed away last night in her home in Detroit, MI. She was 92 years old. The New York Times has the story.

Rosa Parks, a black seamstress whose refusal to relinquish her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., almost 50 years ago grew into a mythic event that helped touch off the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's, died yesterday at her home in Detroit. She was 92 years old.

For her act of defiance, Mrs. Parks was arrested, convicted of violating the segregation laws and fined $10, plus $4 in court fees. In response, blacks in Montgomery boycotted the buses for nearly 13 months while mounting a successful Supreme Court challenge to the Jim Crow law that enforced their second-class status on the public bus system.

The events that began on that bus in the winter of 1955 captivated the nation and transformed a 26-year-old preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. into a major civil rights leader. It was Dr. King, the new pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, who was drafted to head the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization formed to direct the nascent civil rights struggle.

"Mrs. Parks's arrest was the precipitating factor rather than the cause of the protest," Dr. King wrote in his 1958 book, "Stride Toward Freedom. "The cause lay deep in the record of similar injustices."

While today is a day to celebrate her life and her contributions to the Civil Rights movement, I fear that certain "de facto" leaders of the black community will use Rosa Parks' memory in vain, and launch unfounded race-baiting attacks that have regretfully become all too familiar. Certainly, such "leaders" like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan couldn't hold a candle to Rosa Parks and should never be held in the same grandeur as she, which makes her passing even more regrettable.

Blogger reactions: Michelle Malkin, LaShawn Barber (with complete roundup), Wizbang, Sister Toldjah.

Posted by Aaron at April 1, 2009 12:00 AM

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Posted by TRF at October 25, 2005 01:51 PM

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