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デトロイト発のAPによれば、アメリカにおける公民権運動のパイオニアであり、後に続くマーティン・ルーサー・キングやマルコム Ｘなどの運動の礎を築いたとされているローザ・パークス女史が、10月24日、デトロイトにある彼女の自宅で親しい友人達に見守られながら永眠。享年92才であった。
彼女は1955年、アラバマ州モンゴメリーでおきた「バス・ボイコット運動」の発起人となった人。
1865年に奴隷制度は廃止されたが、1890年から1900年初頭にかけて、新しい差別法である「ミシシッピー・プラン」別名「ジム・クロウ」という「人種隔離制度」が南部諸州で誕生した。これは、住居、学校はもとよりバスや公衆トイレといった公共の場での人種による完全な隔離を行うという制度であった。
1955年12月1日、モンゴメリーのデパートで、裁縫師として一日中働いた42才のローザ・パークスは、くたくたに疲れきってバスに乗った。この日、バスは大変混んでいて、前方にある白人専用の席のすぐ後ろの一列目の席に腰掛けた。白人専用席は満席だった。
２，３の停留所を過ぎた時、白人男性が１人バスに乗ってきた。運転手は彼女に席を譲るように言った。白人専用席が満員の場合には、そのすぐ後ろの列も、白人に譲らなければならないようになっていた。しかし、彼女は疲れ切っていたので、「No」といった。運転手は彼女を動かそうとしたが、彼女は動かなかった。運転手はバスを止め、警察に電話し、ローザ・パークスは逮捕され、刑務所に収監された。
このニュースは直ちに黒人団体や活動家達に伝えられ、以前から人種隔離制度に対して怒りと抗議の意思を持っていた人たちによって、「バス・ボイコット運動」が起こった。そして、このことから、次第に運動は、公民権運動へと広がっていった。
「バス・ボイコット運動」は成功し、1956年、連邦政府はバスの人種隔離に違憲の判決を下す。
その後、アラバマ大学やアーカンソー州リトルロック高校、ミシシッピー大学など南部一連の学校で起きた白人と黒人の共学に対する暴動や、ノース・カロライナ農工大学での黒人学生による「ランチ・カウンター座り込み運動」などは、メディアを通じて全米に伝わり、他州の大学からも（特にカリフォルニア大学バークレー校など）この運動を応援するために集まった。
1963年8月、20万人がワシントンに集まり、「ワシントン大行進」を行った（先日行われたネーション・オブ・イスラムとヒップ・ホップ界による「100万人の大行進」は、これを真似たもの）。20万人を前にして、マーティン・ルーサー・キング牧師は、あの有名な演説「私には夢がある（I have a dream)」をしたのだった。
この集会から３ヵ月後、「新公民権法」を議会に提出することを約束していたケネディー大統領が暗殺され、翌年、リンドン・ジョンソンがこれを成立させた。
小さな灯火でも、大きくなりうるということを身をもって示してくれた人であった（日本人もアメリカの「植民地政策（？）」に負けず、頑張ってもらいたいものである）。
彼女の御冥福をお祈りしたい。
（文は私のオリジナル)
(これは、Yahoo にあったAPの記事）
Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks Dies at 92
By BREE FOWLER, Associated Press Writer
36 minutes ago
DETROIT - Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday evening. She was 92.
Mrs. Parks died at her home during the evening of natural causes, with close friends by her side, said Gregory Reed, an attorney who represented her for the past 15 years.
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."
At that time, Jim Crow laws in place since the post-Civil War Reconstruction required separation of the races in buses, restaurants and public accommodations throughout the South, while legally sanctioned racial discrimination kept blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in the North.
The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress, an active member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 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.
U.S. Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record), in whose office Parks worked for more than 20 years, remembered the civil rights leader Monday night as someone whose impact on the world was immeasurable, but who never saw herself that way.
"Everybody wanted to explain Rosa Parks and wanted to teach Rosa Parks, but Rosa Parks wasn't very interested in that," he said. "She wanted to them to understand the government and to understand their rights and the Constitution that people are still trying to perfect today."
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said he felt a personal tie to the civil rights icon: "She stood up by sitting down. I'm only standing here because of her."
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. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long."
Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
"At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this," Mrs. Parks said 30 years later. "It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in."
The Montgomery bus boycott, which came one year after the Supreme Court's landmark declaration that separate schools for blacks and whites were "inherently unequal," marked the start of the modern civil rights movement.
The movement culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations.
After taking her public stand for civil rights, Mrs. Parks had trouble finding work in Alabama. Amid threats and harassment, she and her husband Raymond moved to Detroit in 1957. She worked as an aide in the Detroit office of Democratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers from 1965 until retiring in 1988. Raymond Parks died in 1977.
Mrs. Parks became a revered figure in Detroit, where a street and middle school were named for her and a papier-mache likeness of her was featured in the city's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Mrs. Parks said upon retiring from her job with Conyers that she wanted to devote more time to the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. The institute, incorporated in 1987, is devoted to developing leadership among Detroit's young people and initiating them into the struggle for civil rights.
"Rosa Parks: My Story" was published in February 1992. In 1994 she brought out "Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation," and in 1996 a collection of letters called "Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today's Youth."
She was among the civil rights leaders who addressed the Million Man March in October 1995.
In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to civilians making outstanding contributions to American life. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Mrs. Parks received dozens of other awards, ranging from induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor to an NAACP Image Award for her 1999 appearance on CBS' "Touched by an Angel."
The Rosa Parks Library and Museum opened in November 2000 in Montgomery. The museum features a 1955-era bus and a video that recreates the conversation that preceded Parks' arrest.
"Are you going to stand up?" the bus driver asked.
"No," Parks answered.
"Well, by God, I'm going to have you arrested," the driver said.
"You may do that," Parks responded.
Mrs. Parks' later years were not without difficult moments.
In 1994, Mrs. Parks' home was invaded by a 28-year-old man who beat her and took $53. She was treated at a hospital and released. The man, Joseph Skipper, pleaded guilty, blaming the crime on his drug problem.
The Parks Institute struggled financially since its inception. The charity's principal activity — the annual Pathways to Freedom bus tour taking students to the sites of key events in the civil rights movement — routinely cost more money than the institute could raise.
Mrs. Parks lost a 1999 lawsuit that sought to prevent the hip-hop duo OutKast from using her name as the title of a Grammy-nominated song. In 2000, she threatened legal action against an Oklahoma man who planned to auction Internet domain name rights to http://www.rosaparks.com.
After losing the OutKast lawsuit, Reed, her attorney, said Mrs. Parks "has once again suffered the pains of exploitation." A later suit against OutKast's record company was settled out of court.
She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala. Family illness interrupted her high school education, but after she married Raymond Parks in 1932, he encouraged her and she earned a diploma in 1934. He also inspired her to become involved in the NAACP.
Looking back in 1988, Mrs. Parks said she worried that black young people took legal equality for granted.
Older blacks, she said "have tried to shield young people from what we have suffered. And in so doing, we seem to have a more complacent attitude.
"We must double and redouble our efforts to try to say to our youth, to try to give them an inspiration, an incentive and the will to study our heritage and to know what it means to be black in America today."
At a celebration in her honor that same year, she said: "I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die — the dream of freedom and peace."
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