The Daily Universe celebrates 50 years
This story originally appeared in the Daily Universe on January 17, 1992
By Brenda Longhurst
Rosa Louise Parks is scheduled to speak Thursday at 11 a.m. in the Joseph Smith Building Auditorium as part of Black Awareness Week.
Parks became famous for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man.
On Dec. 1, 1955, Parks was approached by a gentleman on the bus who asked her to give up her seat.
Parks, at that time an employee of the national Association for the Advancement of Colored People and on her way to prepare for a major youth conference, refused to give up her seat. Although her response nowadays would be completely acceptable, in 1955 she was arrested.
The Montgomery Ala., bus incident snowballed into a revolution for equal rights among all people.
Because of her passive resistance, Parks is recognized as the 'Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement.'
A reception and book signing of her autobiography 'My Story' will be in 305 MSRB form 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.
Black Student Union Association President Pamela Stokes, a genealogy major from Montana, said, 'Rosa Parks is the woman who got the whole desegregation process started.'
Stokes and Parks felt her arrest was a violation of her rights as were the the segregation laws, and she was not alone; her arrest sparked a wave of protest across the nation.
Stokes said Parks was tired of being expected to give everything because she was black, that she was tired of the whites taking advantage of the other minorities.
Stokes said Parks showed everyone that it was OK to say 'No,' that minorities were human beings too and were entitled to all the rights and privileges whites were.
These are some of Parks' convictions, Stokes said.
People of all different races and creeds began the passive resistance against segregation.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. became the spokesman for a bus boycott in Montgomery as he encouraged the non-violent opposition.
Sit-ins, eat-ins, swim-ins, and other passive actions occurred all over the country.
Dr. King and Parks shared at vision, a vision that all people, not just blacks and whites, but all races and creeds would become united in a common goal of peace and happiness.
Parks was born Feb. 4, 1918, in Tuskegee, Ala, to James and Leona Edwards McCauley.