U.S. Congress Honors Civil Rights Warrior Rosa Parks

By Eddie Eichler
USIA Staff Writer

(Activist receives Congressional Gold Medal on June 15, 1999)

WASHINGTON -- In 1955, when Rosa Parks struck a blow against racial segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, by refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, there were three African-Americans in Congress. Today there are 39, and a number of them were on hand June 15 to see Parks awarded Congress's highest civilian medal of achievement, the Congressional Gold Medal.

On hand to present the award in the Capitol Rotunda were President Clinton and members of the congressional leadership, including Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt. The Senate was represented by Minority Leader Thomas Daschle. Retired General Colin Powell and the Reverend Jesse Jackson also attended the ceremony, along with many other dignitaries and civil rights activists.

After giving Parks the medal, President Clinton spoke of a need for continued work towards freedom: "I thank the Congress for honoring Rosa Parks... But remember, my fellow Americans, freedom's work is never done. There are still people who are discriminated against... There are still people that because of their human condition are looked down on, derided, degraded, demeaned, and we should all remember the powerful example of this one citizen. And those of us with greater authority and power should attempt every day, in every way, to follow her lead."

Rosa Parks was born in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. She and her husband Raymond both worked in the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) -- she as secretary and youth leader of the local branch.

In the segregationist South in the mid 1950s, blacks were forced to sit in the back of buses while the more favored front seats were reserved for whites. But Mrs. Parks, tired from work one December day in 1955, sat in a front seat and refused to budge from it when the white driver ordered her to the back of the bus. Her action touched off what became known nationally as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, during which 42,000 African-Americans refused to ride public transportation there for 381 days. It also marked the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in America and the emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr., as its leader.

Reflecting on her action, Senate Minority Leader Daschle said: "Today we honor a woman whose courageous act of defiance showed all of us how to do what Dr. King asked the people of Montgomery to do... In the instant Rosa Parks refused to move, the moral arc of the universe bent closer to justice." Daschle added that "it would be more than a year before the Supreme Court ruled Montgomery's segregated buses unconstitutional. During that time, tens of thousands of working-class African-Americans walked miles to work ever day in the heat and the cold and the rain. Many of the boycotters, including Mrs. Parks, lost their jobs. But they persevered with courage and dignity and faith. In the end, they didn't just change the law. They changed our nation, and this world, for the better."

Hastert said that all of the traits that Americans wish to instill in their children "are embodied in Mrs. Parks. Rosa Parks stood up for what was right, by refusing to physically stand up for what was wrong. Her courageous decision mobilized people around the country and launched the modern civil rights movement."

House Leader Gephardt called Parks a "quiet activist who understood the moral consequences of her defiance."

Expressing her appreciation upon receiving the award, Mrs. Parks said, "I receive this Congressional Medal...for the thousands of participants in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and for the thousands who will complete the work undone.... As my legacy of 'quiet strength' passes to the youth of this nation...I am very confident that 'we shall overcome.'"

Blacks have made significant political progress since Mrs. Parks's activism. According to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, an African-American think tank, the number of black elected officials in the United States has jumped from 300 in the early 1960s to more than 8,600 today.