Rose Parks

The Paczki Principle

A dozen rose bouquet
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose

A half century ago, on December 1, 1955, a woman made a decision that would change the course of history. Rosa Parks, a seamstress, was tired when she got on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus that day. Not just physically tired, but tired of the indignities of racism. "Our mistreatment was just not right, and
I was tired of it," Rosa Parks wrote in her book, Quiet Strength. "I didn't want to pay my fare and then go around the back door, because many times, even if you did that, you might not get on the bus at all. They'd probably shut the door, drive off, and leave you standing there."

Ms. Parks was charged and convicted of disorderly conduct, the Montgomery bus boycott ensued, and within a year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation on Montgomery buses to be unconstitutional.

This was not the first time Rosa Parks had challenged the archaic laws of the south. Indeed, a dozen years earlier she was put off a bus for not entering by the back door. In the same year she was also denied the right to register to vote. Unable to ignore these injustices, she went on to become the Secretary of the Montgomery NAACP, and thus began a lifetime of activism.

After the boycott, Ms. Parks' and her husband Raymond's celebrity made them unemployable by Montgomery's white business community and they received constant death threats. Less than two years after that fateful December day, Ms. Parks' family was forced to leave Montgomery and move to Detroit.

The move didn't dampen her spirit to continue to fight for civil rights. Ten years after the death of her husband of 44 years, she began The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Devel- opment. The Institute sponsors an annual summer program for teenagers called Pathways to Freedom. The young people tour the country in buses, visiting Underground Railroad sites and learning the history of the civil rights movement.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Rosa Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the U.S. government. Rosa Parks died peacefully in her Detroit home on October 24, 2005 at the age of 92.

Read more:

Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute
http://www.rosaparks.org/