Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Rosa Parks who passed away yesterday.
Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1913. After her marriage to Raymond Parks, she worked for many years as a seamstress, until 1965 when she was hired by Democratic John Conyers, Jr. as an aide to his congressional office in Detroit.
On December 1, 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white man. Commenting many years later, Rosa set the record straight for the event that had her arrested and credited her with sparking the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
She did not have sore feet that day. Rosa Parks was tired of being humiliated, of having to adapt to rules and traditions that reinforced the position of blacks as being something less than full human beings.
Rosa has been described as shy and soft spoken. She was reluctant to be the symbol that she had become. Through the 1940s and 1950s she was an active member of the NAACP.
Her life is a lesson to all of us. The actions of individuals can cause big changes for all of us. In the words of the Kingston Trio, “When Rosa Parks sat down, the whole world stood up. What's good for one, is good for all, is good for all of us”.