This story originally appeared in the Michigan Advance.
Rosa Louise McCauley was born on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala.
In 1955, the African American woman, by then known as Rosa Parks, became a civil rights icon after her refusal during the Jim Crow era to surrender her seat on a public bus so that a white passenger could sit there. The 42-year-old seamstress was arrested for her act of civil disobedience. The action helped to spark the Civil Rights Movement that led to the Congressional passage and presidential signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
“I’d see the bus pass every day,” said Parks many years later. “But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a Black world and a white world.”
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Historian Danielle McGuire’s research suggests Parks was a freedom fighter and activist during those 1950s days in Alabama.
“Rosa Parks’ actions that day were a decade’s worth of activism,” said McGuire, author of “At the Dark End of the Street,” a book that chronicles civil rights history in the American South.
Parks moved to Detroit in 1957 and worked as an assistant to U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Detroit) beginning in 1975. In 1976, the city of Detroit renamed 12th Street in her honor.
In 1965, more than 800 people attended a Cobo Hall event in Detroit to honor Rosa Parks “Mother of the Negro Revolt.” It was sponsored by the Women’s Public Affairs Committee of 1,000, Inc. Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., attended the event.
Parks was presented with the prestigious Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. Democratic Vice President Al Gore attended the Detroit event.
In 2005, the Michigan Senate, in bipartisan fashion, adopted a resolution, sponsored by then-Sen. Irma Clark-Coleman (D-Detroit), memorializing the life of Parks and declared Dec. 1, 2005, “Rosa Parks Day.”
“Mrs. Parks’ righteous defiance of the law by not giving up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus beseeches us to abhor actions and rules that deny our fellow human beings essential civil rights,” a portion of the resolution read.
Similarly, Democrats and Republicans in the Michigan House also adopted a resolution in 2005 to lift up Parks’ life. It was sponsored by then-state Rep. Marsha Cheeks (D-Detroit).
“Mrs. Parks devoted herself to the Raymond and Rosa Parks Institute for Self-Development. This institute, incorporated in 1987, helps lead the fight for learning, substance abuse prevention, and the development of leadership in American youth, with centers located in both Michigan and California. For more than fifteen years, the institute has been instrumental in changing and improving the lives of young people in Michigan and across the country. Her goal to provide limitless opportunities for youth has been realized through her works,” a portion of the resolution read.
The Nov. 2, 2005, funeral service for Parks at Detroit’s Greater Grace Temple lasted more than seven hours and broadcast live on local television.
“The power I feel in this church today is part of the power she left,” said Conyers during the service.
Then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm also praised Parks during the funeral.
“By your actions you have given us your final marching orders,” said Granholm. “We are enlisted in this war and on behalf of the state of Michigan, ma’am, we are reporting for duty.”
President Joe Biden has a bust of Parks in the White House Oval Office, alongside those for King, former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and former U.S. attorney general and U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.).
The Detroit-based Rosa and Raymond Parks Foundation founded in 1980 has raised more than $2 million in scholarships for deserving high school students to attend colleges and universities.
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