by Art Toalston, posted Tuesday, October 25, 2005 (18 years ago)
DETROIT (BP)--Rosa Parks, a laywoman who, at the forefront of the civil rights movement, found strength in the 23rd Psalm and other passages of Scripture, died of natural causes Oct. 24 at her home in Detroit.
Parks, 92, died just a few weeks shy of the 50th anniversary of her Dec. 1, 1955, arrest for refusing to surrender her seat to a white man on a segregated bus –- an event that sparked the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott and the rise to national prominence of a local pastor: Martin Luther King Jr., then of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
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Rosa Parks
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Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, a member of First Baptist Church in Ashland, said the state “joins the nation in mourning as we mark the passing of a remarkable life.” Riley ordered the flags at the state capitol flown at half-staff in Parks’ honor until sunset on the day of her funeral.
“Rosa Parks will always be remembered as a courageous woman who quietly confronted injustice, and in so doing, she changed a nation,” Riley said. Read More