DETROIT, Oct 25: Rosa Parks, the black seamstress whose refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white man sparked a revolution in American race relations, died on Monday. The US civil rights pioneer was 92.
Shirley Kaigler, Parks’ lawyer, said she died while taking a nap early on Monday evening surrounded by a small group of friends and family members.
“She just fell asleep and didn’t wake up,” Kaigler said.
The cause of death was not immediately known. Medical records released earlier this year revealed she was suffering from progressive dementia. She rarely appeared in public in recent years.
Parks was a 42-year-old seamstress for a Montgomery department store when she caught a bus in downtown Montgomery on Dec 1, 1955.
Three stops after she got on, a white man boarded and had to stand. To make room for him to sit alone, as the rules required, driver James Blake told Parks and three other black riders, “You all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats.”
The other riders complied but Parks did not.
“No. I’m tired of being treated like a second-class citizen,” she told Blake. Blake called police, who asked Parks why she didn’t move: “I didn’t think I should have to. I paid my fare like everybody else.”—Reuters
