Rosa L. Parks

Rosa Parks, "The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement" died quietly in her Detroit home of natural causes. She was 92.

Parks was the Alabama seamstress whose soft-spoken refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man on December 1, 1955 triggered the Montgomery bus boycott. This was the first great mass action in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and acted as the catalyst that brought Martin Luther King Jr. to prominence. King later inscribed a copy of his book Stride Toward Freedom to Parks:"Whose creative witness," he wrote, ''was the great force that led to the modern stride toward freedom."

Parks wrote in her own autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story, ''I had no idea when I refused to give up my seat on that Montgomery bus that my small action would help put an end to the segregation laws in the South. People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that wasn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was 42. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

Parks was convicted on Dec. 5 of violating the segregation laws. She received a suspended sentence and was fined $10, plus $4 in court costs. A month later she lost her job. The association filed suit in federal court on Feb. 1, 1956, challenging the constitutionality of segregated seating. On June 5, a three-judge panel voted 2-to-1 in the plaintiffs' favor. On Nov. 13, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court ruling. The boycott continued until Dec. 20, when federal marshals served the order on city officials. The boycott lasted for 381 days.

Parks' quiet action of defiance sparked a movement that is well-remembered half a century later and will certainly never be forgotten.

Civil rights activist Rosa Parks will lie in state in Montgomery, Alabama, the city where she started a nationwide civil rights movement, before her body is flown back to Detroit for funeral services.

Parks' body will lie in state at the church where she had been a member, St. Paul AME Church, in Montgomery on Saturday, Oct. 29, and Sunday, Oct. 30, according to Karen Dumas, a press coordinator working with Parks' trustees on funeral arrangements.

Sunday: Parks' body will lie in state at the Lincoln Memorial from 6 p.m. to midnight. Read Special Report Click Here

Parks will return to Detroit where her body will lie in state at the Museum of African American History on Tuesday, Nov. 1, from 6 a.m. to midnight.

Her funeral will be held Wednesday, Nov. 2 at Greater Grace Temple in Detroit at 11 a.m.  

Funeral Arrangements Entrusted to

Swanson Family of Funeral Homes, Detroit, MI
 O'Neil D. Swanson, CEO. . .

Other Links to this Great Woman of Courage:

1. Rosa & Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development

 2. Share with Your Children  My Story Rosa Parks

 3. Photos Detroit Free Press

 4. Parks' body will lie in state at the Lincoln Memorial from 6 p.m. to midnight.
     Read Special Report Click Here

5.  Funeral Program from Alabama You can print it. Click Here