She wanted freedom for all people

One of the most famous personalities of modern American history, a racial equality activist, Rosa Parks, has died at the age of 92. Almost fifty years ago, her act of civil disobedience had enthused the forces of perhaps the biggest social change of the 20th century.

Rosa Parks, the pioneer of fight for rights of Afro-Americans and one of the most prominent personalities of modern American movement for civil rights, died on 25 October this year at the age of 92. In 1955, Rosa Parks had refused to give up her bus seat for a white man, which she was at the time obliged to do as a black woman. The bus driver called the police and Mrs Rosa was arrested. It was at that time that the then unknown local minister Martin Luther King organised a year-long boycott of buses by black people. The rest is, as it is usually said, history …

On 1 December 1955, the seamstress Rosa Parks had got on a bus in the town of Montgomery, Alabama, in the south of the United States of America. In accord with regulations in force at the time, the people of black skin colour had to give up their bus seats for white people, if the latter requested so.

This is how Mrs Rosa Parks described the incident several years later:

– A white man asked me to give up my seat for him. I refused. The bus driver interfered and said that he would have to call the police if I did not stand up. I told him to that do if he wished, and so he did. They arrested me. But I was not afraid. I do not know how, but I was not afraid. I decided that once and for all I had to know my rights, the rights of a human being and a citizen of Montgomery, Alabama, in the United States.

The Montgomery blacks responded to the bus incident by a one-year boycott of public transport, which was organised by the then unknown Baptist minister Martin Luther King:
“For several weeks already, we, the black citizens of Montgomery, have been engaged in a non-violent protest against the injustice we have suffered in buses for years.”

This and other non-violent protests led by Doctor Martin Luther King had turned into a movement for civil rights and racial equality in the United States of America, which led to the adoption of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, which made racial discrimination in the United States illegal.

Rosa Parks nevertheless continued to fight for true equality. In a recollection of her life, the US congressman Jesse Jackson said that the courageous and audacious seamstress from Montgomery had changed America forever:

 – Almost fifty years ago, Rosa Parks and her act of civil disobedience had enthused the forces of perhaps the biggest social change of the 20th century. America is now a better nation than it would have been without Rosa Parks. Not only that she had inspired the modern civil rights movement, but also the movements that worked to extend and enhance the rights of women and all minorities. Her immense contribution to the 20th century should have been awarded by the Nobel Prize for peace during her lifetime.

After this protest, Rosa Parks could not find employment in Alabama. She moved with her husband to the north of the country, to Detroit, where a street and a school now bear her name.

In the past ten years, she had received two biggest American civil awards – the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. When asked what she would like people to remember her by, she said:

“I wish to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free and wanted freedom for others…”

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Michael Moore, American journalist, publicist and author said:

A singular act of courage

„December 1 should have been a bank holiday in the United States of America, as on that day in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, a seamstress refused to give up her seat for a white man and go from the front to the back of the public transportation bus. The law requested her do to so because her skin was black. Her singular act of courage had shaken the whole country and started a whole revolution. This woman, Rosa Parks, who lived in my state of Michigan, is an important reminder that big social changes can happen even with an initiative of one or two persons with conscience.“