Civil rights pioneer Parks dies at 92

From combined dispatches

DETROIT — Rosa Lee Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died yesterday. She was 92.

Shirley Kaigler, Mrs. Parks’ attorney, said she died while taking a nap early last night surrounded by a small group of friends and family members.

“She just fell asleep and didn’t wake up,” the lawyer said.

The cause of death was not immediately known. Mrs. Parks had fought a long battle with dementia.

Mrs. Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title “mother of the civil rights movement.”

The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress, an active member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Montgomery Voters League, was riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat.

Mrs. Parks refused, despite rules requiring blacks to yield their seats to whites. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.

“We’re saddened by the passing of Rosa Parks,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson told CNN by telephone last night from South Africa. But her actions, he said, “will live forever.”

Mr. Jackson, who was 14 at the time of the bus boycott, said he had reached the age when the typical black person “had already begun to accept … the daily humiliations” of Jim Crow-era segregation.

“She sat down in order that others might stand up,” Mr. Jackson said, echoing reactions from other prominent black leaders last night.

“She stood up by sitting down. I’m only standing here because of her,” Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said.

The Rev. Al Sharpton called Mrs. Parks “a gentle woman whose single act changed the most powerful nation in the world.”

“One of the highlights of my life was meeting and getting to know her,” he said.

Speaking in 1992, Mrs. Parks said history too often maintains “that my feet were hurting and I didn’t know why I refused to stand up when they told me.”

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