Parks' legacy moves forward

By Pamela Glason Thornton
Staff Writer
Columbus Post

Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks demonstrated to the world how one person’s action can affect an entire population. From the Montgomery Bus boycott to the Parks Institute for Self-Development, Parks, who died quietly in her Detroit home at the age of 92 on Oct. 24, created an everlasting legacy. She had suffered from dementia since 2002.
Parks, a seamstress who was active in her town’s NAACP chapter, sparked the modern-day civil rights movement, when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began December 5, 1955, lasted 381 days and resulted in the 1956 Supreme Court decision that declared segregation illegal on city buses.
In 1995, Parks recalled her experiences to attorney and author Gregory J. Reed in the book “Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope, and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed A Nation,” commemorating the 40th anniversary of the boycott. Parks relayed her life experiences and fight for civil rights and the equal treatment of all people to Attorney Gregory J. Reed, who penned the book.
“I knew that I could have been lynched, manhandled or beaten when the police came,” she told Reed. “I chose not to move. When I made that decision, I knew that I had the strength of my ancestors with me.”
Although Parks has been quoted as saying she didn’t realize what she had started by refusing to give up her seat, other reports have suggested her action was part of an organized campaign initiated by the NAACP and Montgomery’s other civil rights organizations.
Parks’ action subsequently brought initial attention to a young pastor named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who was quickly deemed the leader of the burgeoning civil rights movement.

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