by Dan Perkins

Thursday, December 1, 2005, marked the fiftieth anniversary of Rosa Park's refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a Alabama bus.  That quiet act of defiance sparked the civil rights movement, which forever changed the American nation. 

Fifty years later, a small group of African American and white political leaders gather around the President as George W. Bush signed H.R. 4145, a bill authorizing a statute of Rosa Parks be placed in the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall.  Joining the President, as pictured above, from left to right, was U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, R-IN, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson, Mrs. Laura Bush, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-IL, U.S. Senator John Kerry, D-MA, and U.S. Senator Thad Cochran, R-MS.  Jackson, Kerry, Cochran and Lugar are the bill's sponsors.

After acknowledging dignitaries attending the White House ceremony, including Dr. Dorothy Height and Bruce Gordon, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the president spoke of the circumstances that led up to Park's revolutionary act of civil disobedience.

He noted that in 1955, local and state law required African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama to give up their seats if any white people were standing.  Rosa Parks, a daughter of the South, was then working as a seamstress at a Montgomery department store.  On December 1, 1955, she boarded a city bus after a long day of work, and later caused a stir when she refused to give up her seat to a white man.

The president reminded the audience of what Parks would later say, "I wasn't tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day ... No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

"By refusing to give in, Rosa Parks showed that one candle can light the darkness," said the president who noted that segregation, like so many institutionalized evils, depended on public accommodation.

Parks was arrested for violating the segregation laws of the day, but her arrest sparked the now famous boycott of the Montgomery bus lines by African Americans.  That boycott lasted until the Supreme Court struck down segregation on buses more than a year later.  

"What had begun as a simple act of civil disobedience ended up galvanizing the modern movement for civil rights," said Bush. "By refusing to give in, Rosa Parks called America back to its founding promise of equality and justice for everyone," he continued.

Parks, and the subsequent Boycott, were guided by the inspirational leadership of a young preacher named Martin Luther King, Junior.  King and other black ministers invoked the Constitution and higher law in defending Park's aspirations to be treated equally and fairly.  "Our Declaration of Independence makes clear that the human right to dignity and equality is not a grant of government -- it is a gift from the Author of Life," said the president to a round of applause.  He went on to say that by helping her fellow African Americans claim their God-given freedoms, Rosa Parks made America a better place.

The civil rights movement eventually prompted Congress to pass sweeping legislation that dealt with voting rights and discrimination in public places.  As the president recounted these facts, he called upon the United States Congress to renew the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In his closing remarks, the president called Rosa Parks an American hero and said it is fitting to honor her with a monument inside "the most visible symbol of American democracy."  He concluded by saying, "We hope that generations of Americans will remember what this brave woman did, and be inspired to add their own contributions to the unfolding story of American freedom for all."

Parks is the first African American woman to have a statute in the U.S. Capitol Building.

The End