Rosa Parks Started a Revolution, Then Built Her Legacy On Compassion

Summary

---

While [Rosa Parks]' recent death and funeral-brought out the world's elite who waxed poetic about her symbolic motherhood of the Civil Rights Movement, Parks was so much before and after her historic act.

She had a saintly aura about her but wasn't a pure pacifist. She didn't believe in gratuitous violence for violence's sake, but she did believe in firmly standing up and maintaining one's personal dignity, integrity and civil liberties.

In recent years, she published a children's book called "Rosa Parks: My Story," a chronological outline of her life before the bus incident, along with her memoirs, "Quiet Strength." The Rosa Parks Library and Museum was dedicated to her in Montgomery, Ala., and a documentary based on her life, "Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks," won the 2002 Academy Award for Documentary Short Series.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Rosa Parks Started a Revolution, Then Built Her Legacy On Compassion

Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress, had no idea she was about to rewrite history when, work-weary, she refused to surrender her seat to a White passenger on a segregated bus in Alabama. She was forever immortalized for this act of defiance that triggere...

See the full content of this document

---