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The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (November 2011)

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.

Civil rights include the ensuring of peoples' physical and mental integrity, life and safety; protection from discrimination on grounds such as physical or mental disability, gender, religion, race, national origin, age, status as a member of the uniformed services, sexual orientation, or gender identity;^[1][2][3] and individual rights such as privacy, the freedoms of thought and conscience, speech and expression, religion, the press, and movement.

Political rights include natural justice (procedural fairness) in law, such as the rights of the accused, including the right to a fair trial; due process; the right to seek redress or a legal remedy; and rights of participation in civil society and politics such as freedom of association, the right to assemble, the right to petition, the right of self-defense, and the right to vote.

Civil and political rights form the original and main part of international human rights.^[4] They comprise the first portion of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (with economic, social and cultural rights comprising the second portion). The theory of three generations of human rights considers this group of rights to be "first-generation rights", and the theory of negative and positive rights considers them to be generally negative rights.

The phrase "civil rights" is a translation of Latin ius civis (rights of citizens). Roman citizens could be either free (libertas) or servile (servitus), but they all had rights in law.^[5] After the Edict of the Milan in 313, these rights included the freedom of religion.^[6] Roman legal doctrine was lost during the Middle Ages, but claims of universal rights could still be made based on religious doctrine. According to the leaders of Kett's Rebellion (1549), "all bond men may be made free, for God made all free with his precious blood-shedding."^[7]

In the 17th century, English common law judge Sir Edward Coke revived the idea of rights based on citizenship by arguing that Englishmen had historically enjoyed such rights. The English Bill of Rights was adopted in 1689. The Virginia Declaration of Rights, by George Mason and James Madison, was adopted in 1776. The Virginia declaration is the direct ancestor and model for the U.S. Bill of Rights (1789).

In early 19th century Britain, the phrase "civil rights" most commonly referred to the problem of legal discrimination against Catholics. In the House of Commons support for the British civil rights movement was divided, many more largely known politicians supported the discrimination towards Catholics. Independent MPs (such as Lewis Eves and Matthew Mountford) applied pressure on the larger parties to pass the civil rights act of the 1920s.

In the 1860s, Americans adapted this usage to newly freed blacks. Congress enacted civil rights acts in 1866, 1871, 1875, 1957, 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1991.

Guarantees of rights[link]

T.H. Marshall Notes that civil rights were among the first to be recognized and codified, followed later by political rights and still later by social rights. In many countries, they are constitutional rights and are included in a bill of rights or similar document. They are also defined in international human rights instruments, such as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Civil and political rights need not be codified to be protected, although most democracies worldwide do have formal written guarantees of civil and political rights. Civil rights are often considered to be natural rights. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1774 A Summary View of the Rights of British America that "a free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."

Custom also plays a role. Implied or unenumerated rights are rights that courts may find to exist even though not expressly guaranteed by written law or custom; one example is the right to privacy in the United States.

The question of to whom civil and political rights apply is a subject of controversy. In many countries, citizens have greater protections against infringement of rights than non-citizens; at the same time, civil and political rights are considered to be universal rights that apply to all persons.

Civil rights movement[link]

Civil rights guarantee equal protection under the law. When civil and political rights are not guaranteed to all as part of equal protection of laws, or when such guarantees exist on paper but are not respected in practice, opposition, legal action and even social unrest may ensue.

Civil Rights movements began as early as 1848 in the USA with such documents as the Declaration of Sentiment.^[8] Consciously modeled after the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments became the founding document of the American women's movement, and it was adopted at the Seneca Falls Convention, July 19 and 20, 1848 ^[9]

The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. The movement had a legal and constitutional aspect, and resulting in much law-making at both national and international levels. It also had an activist side, particularly in situations where violations of rights were widespread. Movements with the proclaimed aim of securing observance of civil and political rights included:

• the US civil rights struggle in the 1960s in the United States, where rights of black citizens had been violated;
• the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, formed in 1967 following failures in this province of the United Kingdom to respect the Catholic minority's rights; and
• movements in many Communist countries, such as Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia.

Most civil rights movements relied on the technique of civil resistance, using nonviolent methods of struggle, to achieve their aims.^[10] In some countries, struggles for civil rights were accompanied, or followed, by civil unrest and even armed rebellion. While civil rights movements over the last 60 years have resulted in an extension of civil and political rights, the process was long and tenuous in many countries, and many of these movements did not achieve or fully achieve their objectives.

Problems and analysis[link]

Questions about civil and political rights have frequently emerged. For example, to what extent should the government intervene to protect individuals from infringement on their rights by other individuals, or from corporations — e.g., in what way should employment discrimination in the private sector be dealt with?

Political theory deals with civil and political rights. Robert Nozick and John Rawls expressed competing visions in Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia and Rawls' A Theory of Justice. Other influential authors in the area include Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld and Jean Edward Smith.

See also[link]

	Human rights portal
	Discrimination portal
	Politics portal

• Civil death
• Civil liberties
• Civil resistance
• Constitutional economics
• Division of powers
• Flex Your Rights
• Justice
• Police power
• Proactive policing
• Public interest
• Rule According to Higher Law
• Rule of law
• Three generations of human rights

References[link]

External links[link]

• Civil Rights entry by Andrew Altman in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle ~ an online multimedia encyclopedia presented by the King Institute at Stanford University, includes information on over 1000 civil rights movement figures, events and organizations
• "CivilRightsTravel.com" ~ a visitors guide to key sites from the civil rights movement
• The History Channel: Civil Rights Movement
• Civil Rights: Beyond Black & White - slideshow by Life magazine
• Civil Rights in America: Connections to a Movement

[[zh:基本權 (憲法學

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (July 2008)

Julian Bond
Julian Bond in 2005.
Member of the Georgia House of Representatives from the 32nd district
In office 1967–1974
Succeeded by	Mildred Glover[1]
Member of the Georgia Senate from the 39th district
In office 1975–1987
Preceded by	Horace T. Ward[2]
Succeeded by	Hildred W. Shumake[3]
Personal details
Born	Horace Julian Bond (1940-01-14) January 14, 1940 (age 72) Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	(1) Alice Clopton (1961–1989, divorced) (2)Pamela S. Horowitz (1990–present)
Alma mater	George School Morehouse College (BA, English, 1971)

Horace Julian Bond (born January 14, 1940), known as Julian Bond, is an American social activist and leader in the American civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the early 1960s, he helped to establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He was the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Bond was elected to four terms in the Georgia House of Representatives and later to six terms in the Georgia Senate, having served a combined twenty years in both legislative chambers. From 1998 to 2010, he was chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Early life and education[link]

Bond was born in Nashville, Tennessee, to the former Julia Agnes Washington and Horace Mann Bond. The family moved to Pennsylvania when Julian was five because his father was selected as the first African-American president of Lincoln University, also his father's alma mater. In 1957, Bond graduated from George School, a private Quaker preparatory boarding school near Newtown in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

In 1957, Bond attended Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta. While there, he earned a varsity letter for swimming. He also helped found a literary magazine called The Pegasus. Bond worked as an intern at Time magazine. He was also a member of the only class taught by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Ph.D.TogetherinParis (talk) 07:55, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

In 1960, Bond was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and served as its communications director from 1961 to 1966. From 1960 to 1963, he led student protests against segregation in public facilities in Georgia.

Bond left Morehouse in 1961 and returned to complete his BA in English in 1971 at age 31. With Morris Dees, Bond helped found the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a public-interest law firm based in Montgomery, Alabama. He served as its president from 1971 to 1979. Bond continues on the board of directors of the SPLC.

Career[link]

In 1965, Bond was one of eight African Americans elected to the Georgia House of Representatives after passage of civil rights legislation, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On January 10, 1966, however, Georgia state representatives voted 184-12 not to seat him because he publicly endorsed SNCC's policy regarding opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. They disliked Bond's stated sympathy for persons who were "unwilling to respond to a military draft".^[4] A federal District Court panel ruled 2-1 that the Georgia House had not violated any of Bond's federal constitutional rights. In 1966, the United States Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in the case of Bond v. Floyd (385 U.S. 116) that the Georgia House of Representatives had denied Bond his freedom of speech and was required to seat him. From 1967 to 1975, Bond was elected for four terms as a Democratic member in the Georgia House. There he organized the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus.

In January 1967, Bond was among eleven House members who refused to vote when the legislature elected segregationist Lester Maddox of Atlanta as governor of Georgia over the Republican Howard Callaway, who had led in the 1966 general election by some three thousand votes. The choice fell on state lawmakers under the Georgia Constitution of 1824 because neither major party candidate had polled a majority in the general election. Former Governor Ellis Arnall polled more than fifty thousad votes as a write-in cadidate, a factor which led to the impasse. Bond would not support either Maddox or Callaway though he was ordered to vote by lame duck Lieutenant Governor Peter Zack Geer.^[5]

Throughout his House career, Bond's district was repeatedly altered:

• 1967–1969: 136th^[6]
• 1969–1973: 111th^[7]
• 1973–1974: 32nd^[8]

He went on to be elected for six terms in the Georgia Senate in which he served from 1975 to 1987.

During the 1968 presidential election, Bond led an alternate delegation from Georgia to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. There, unexpectedly and contrary to his intention, he became the first African American to be proposed as a major-party candidate for Vice President of the United States. While expressing gratitude for the honor, the 28-year-old Bond quickly declined, citing the constitutional requirement that one must be at least 35 years of age to serve in that office.

Bond resigned from the Georgia Senate in 1987 to run for the United States House of Representatives from Georgia's 5th congressional district. He lost the Democratic nomination in a runoff to rival civil rights leader John Lewis in a bitter contest, in which Bond was accused of using cocaine and other drugs.^[9] As the 5th district had a huge Democratic majority, the nomination delivered the seat to Lewis, who still serves as congressman.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Bond taught at several universities in major cities of the North and South, including American, Drexel, Harvard, and the University of Virginia.

In 1998, Bond was selected as chairman of the NAACP. In November 2008, he announced that he would not seek another term as chairman.^[10] Bond agreed to stay on in the position through 2009 as the organization celebrated its 100th anniversary. Roslyn M. Brock was chosen as Bond's successor on February 20, 2010.^[11]

He continues to write and lecture about the history of the civil rights movement and the condition of African Americans and the poor. He is President Emeritus of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

From 1980 to 1997 he hosted America's Black Forum. He remains a commentator for the Forum, for radio's Byline, and for NBC's The Today Show. He authored the nationally syndicated newspaper column Viewpoint. He narrated the critically acclaimed PBS series Eyes on the Prize in 1987 and 1990.

Bond has been an outspoken supporter of the rights of gays and lesbians. He has publicly stated his support for same-sex marriage. Most notably he boycotted the funeral services for Coretta Scott King on the grounds that the King children had chosen an anti-gay megachurch. This was in contradiction to their mother's longstanding support for the rights of gay and lesbian people.^[12] In a 2005 speech in Richmond, VA, Bond stated:

African Americans ... were the only Americans who were enslaved for two centuries, but we were far from the only Americans suffering discrimination then and now. ... Sexual disposition parallels race. I was born this way. I have no choice. I wouldn’t change it if I could. Sexuality is unchangeable.^[13]

In a 2007 speech on the Martin Luther King Day Celebration at Clayton State University in Morrow, GA, Bond said, "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married." His positions have pitted elements of the NAACP against religious groups in the Black Civil Rights movement who oppose gay marriage mostly within the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) who was blamed partly for the success of the recent gay marriage ban amendment in California.^{[citation needed]}

Today, Bond is a Distinguished Professor in Residence at American University in Washington, D.C. He also is a faculty member in the history department at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, where he teaches history of the Civil Rights Movement.^[14]

In January 2007, he delivered the annual Martin Luther King lecture at Siena College.

Personal life[link]

On July 28, 1961, Bond married Alice Clopton, a student at Spelman College. They divorced on November 10, 1989. They had five children: Phyllis Jane Bond-McMillan, Horace Mann Bond II, Michael Julian Bond, (an At-large member of Atlanta’s Council), Jeffrey Alvin Bond and Julia "Cookie" Louise Bond. He married Pamela S. Horowitz, an attorney, on March 17, 1990.

Legacy and honors[link]

• 2002 - National Freedom Award
• In 1999, an honorary LL.D. from Bates College.
• In 2008, an honorary degree from George Washington University. Bond was the 2008 Commencement Keynote Speaker.^[15]
• On October 1, 2009, an honorary L.H.D. from Macalester College.

The above four are among 25 honorary degrees which he has been awarded.

Eyes on the Prize[link]

Bond was the narrator of the PBS video, Eyes on the Prize, recounting the civil rights controversies of the 1950s and 1960s.

Controversial comments[link]

As NAACP chairman, Bond strongly criticized the Republican Party. WorldNetDaily, a conservative Internet-based news service, which inaccurately reported Bond as saying: "[The Republicans'] idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side-by-side." WorldNetDaily accused him of calling Secretary of State Rice and former Secretary Powell "tokens" and comparing the judicial nominees of President George W. Bush to the Taliban.^[16] His actual words were that the Republican Party uses them "as kinds of human shields against any criticism of their record on civil rights."^[17] The issue was resolved when the Fayetteville Observer reported on its review of the audio recordings of the speech.

Bond was a strong critic of the Bush administration from its assumption of office in 2001, in large part because Bond believed the administration was illegitimate. Twice that year, first in February to the NAACP board and then in July at that organization's national convention, he attacked the administration for selecting Cabinet secretaries "from the Taliban wing of American politics". Bond specifically targeted Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had opposed affirmative action, and Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who defended the Confederacy in a 1996 speech on states' rights. The selection of these two individuals, Bond said, "...whose devotion to the Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritical affection", "appeased the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing". Then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey responded to Bond's statement with a letter accusing NAACP leaders of "racial McCarthyism."^[18]

In 2003 Bond was quoted in a New York Times article criticizing the names of public schools named for Confederate leaders by saying, "If it had been up to Robert E. Lee, these kids wouldn't be going to school as they are today. They can't help but wonder about honoring a man who wanted to keep them in servitude."

Media appearances[link]

During his tenure with the NAACP, Bond was frequently interviewed and appeared on numerous news shows. He also had a small appearance in the movie Ray (2004).

He hosted Saturday Night Live on April 9, 1977, becoming the first black political figure to host the show. The famous segment from this appearance is the "Black Perspective" skit with then-SNL cast member Garrett Morris. Bond explained perceptions of white and black IQ differences with the tongue-in-cheek "theory" that "light-skinned blacks are smarter than dark-skinned blacks."^[19]

On October 11, 2009 Julian appeared at the National Equality March in Washington, D.C. and spoke upon the rights of LGBT community which was aired live on C-SPAN.^[20][21]

Writings[link]

• Black Candidates: Southern Campaign Experiences. Atlanta: Voter Education Project, Southern Regional Council, 1969.
• A Time To Speak, A Time To Act: The Movement in Politics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.
• Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table: A Documentary History of the Civil Rights Movement. (with Andrew Lewis). American Heritage, 1995.
• Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Celebration of the Negro National Anthem, 100 Years, 100 Voices. (with Sondra Kathryn Wilson, eds.) New York: Random House, 2000.
• Nationally syndicated column Viewpoint.
• Poems and articles have appeared in a national list of magazines and newspapers.
• Julian Bond's papers reside at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.

Further reading[link]

References[link]

1. ^ "Members of Georgia House of Representatives alphabetically arranged according to names, with districts and post offices for the term 1974-1975", Acts and resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia (Georgia Legislature) 1: p. 2019, 1974, http://metis.galib.uga.edu/ssp/cgi-bin/legis-idx.pl?sessionid=ae3209bc-778f764566-3062&type=backdiv&byte=357672973 
2. ^ "Members of the Senate of Georgia by Districts in Numberical Order and Post Offices for the Term 1973-1974", Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia 1: p. 1671, 1973, http://metis.galib.uga.edu/ssp/cgi-bin/legis-idx.pl?sessionid=ae3209bc-778f764566-3062&type=backdiv&byte=347539990 
3. ^ "Members of Georgia House of Representatives for the term 1987-1988 by districts and addresses", Acts and resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia (Georgia Legislature): p. CLXXIV, http://metis.galib.uga.edu/ssp/cgi-bin/legis-idx.pl?sessionid=ae3209bc-778f764566-3062&type=backdiv&byte=480518459 
4. ^ The World Almanac 1967, pp. 54–55
5. ^ Billy Hathorn, "The Frustration of Opportunity: Georgia Republicans and the Election of 1966", Atlanta History: A Journal of Georgia and the South, XXXI (Winter 1987-1988), p. 47
6. ^ Acts and resolutions, 1967, 1968
7. ^ 1969-1970 house roster (page 1284)
8. ^ [1]
9. ^ Jet Magazine (Johnson Publishing Company) 72 (5): 54–55. 1987. 
10. ^ "Bond won't seek re-election as NAACP Chairman". International Herald Tribune. 2008-11-18. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/11/18/america/NAACP-Bond.php. Retrieved 2008-11-20. 
11. ^ "NAACP chooses successor to Chairman Julian Bond". CNN. 2010-02-20. http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/02/20/naacp.leadership/index.html. Retrieved 2010-02-20. 
12. ^ Black Voices Q&A 09/25/06 http://www.blackvoices.com/black_news/canvas_directory_headlines_features/_a/bv-qanda-with-julian-bond/20060908115409990002
13. ^ "NAACP chair says ‘gay rights are civil rights’". Washington Blade. 2004-04-08. Archived from the original on March 21, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060321202124/http://www.washblade.com/2005/4-8/news/localnews/naacp.cfm. Retrieved 2009-09-24. 
14. ^ http://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/hjb7g.cfm
15. ^ "NAACP chairman will speak at Commencement". The GW Hatchet. 2008-03-13. http://media.www.gwhatchet.com/media/storage/paper332/news/2008/03/13/News/Naacp.Chairman.Will.Speak.At.Commencement-3280172.shtml. Retrieved 2008-11-18. 
16. ^ WorldNetDaily: NAACP chairman compares GOP to Nazis
17. ^ http://www.fayettevillenc.com/article?id=225894^{[dead link]}
18. ^ Wickham, DeWayne (2001-07-16). "Julian Bond: Master needler" (Opinion). USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnists/wickham/2001-07-12-wickham.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-07. 
19. ^ "SNL Transcripts: Julian Bond / Tom Waits". http://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76rblackperspective.phtml. Retrieved 2008-11-18. 
20. ^ Street vs. suite by Richard J. Rosendall. October 13, 2009. Bay Windows
21. ^ C-Span archive

External links[link]

• NAACP biography
• SPLC biography
• Julian Bond at the Internet Movie Database
• Brief video clip From the State Library & Archives of Florida.
• Julian Bond at Answers.com
• Oral History Interview with Julian Bond from Oral Histories of the American South
• Faculty Profile

Dick Gregory
Dick Gregory in March 2010
Born	(1932-10-12) October 12, 1932 (age 79) St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Medium	Stand-up, film, books
Nationality	African American
Years active	1953–present
Genres	Satire/Political satire, Observational comedy
Subject(s)	American civil rights, American politics, American culture, African-American culture, racism, race relations, vegetarianism, healthy diet
Spouse	Lillian Gregory (1959–present) 10 children
Notable works and roles	In Living Black and White nigger: An Autobiography Write Me In!
Website	www.dickgregory.com

Richard Claxton "Dick" Gregory (born October 12, 1932 in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur.

Gregory is an influential American comic who has used his performance skills to convey to both white and black audiences his political message on civil rights. His social satire helped change the way white Americans perceived African American comedians since he first performed in public.

Early life[link]

As a poor student who excelled at running, Gregory was aided by teachers at Sumner High School, among them Warren St. James. Gregory earned a track scholarship to Southern Illinois University Carbondale.^[1] There he set school records as a half-miler and miler. His college career was interrupted for two years in 1954 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. The army was where he got his start in comedy, entering and winning several Army talent shows at the urging of his commanding officer, who had taken notice of Gregory's penchant for joking. In 1956, Gregory briefly returned to SIU after his discharge, but dropped out because he felt that the university "didn't want me to study, they wanted me to run".

In the hopes of performing comedy professionally, Gregory moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he became part of a new generation of black comedians that included Nipsey Russell, Bill Cosby, and Godfrey Cambridge, all of whom broke with the minstrel tradition, which presented stereotypical black characters. Gregory drew on current events, especially racial issues, for much of his material: "Segregation is not all bad. Have you ever heard of a collision where the people in the back of the bus got hurt?".^[2]

Career[link]

After completing military service, Gregory performed as a comedian in small, primarily black-patronized nightclubs while working for the United States Postal Service during the daytime. In 1961, while working at the Black-owned Roberts Show Bar in Chicago, he was hired by Hugh Hefner to work at the Chicago Playboy Club after Hefner heard him perform the following material before a largely white audience:

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I understand there are a good many Southerners in the room tonight. I know the South very well. I spent twenty years there one night.

Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant and this white waitress came up to me and said, "We don't serve colored people here." I said, "That's all right. I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken."

Then these three white boys came up to me and said, "Boy, we're giving you fair warning. Anything you do to that chicken, we're gonna do to you". So I put down my knife and fork, I picked up that chicken and I kissed it. Then I said, "Line up, boys!".^[3]

This routine caused a direct request from publisher Hugh Hefner and he was booked as a replacement for the white comedian Professor Irwin Corey.^{[citation needed]} Until then Gregory had worked mostly at small clubs with predominantly black audiences.

Gregory's first TV appearance was on the late night The Tonight Show Starring Jack Paar.^{[citation needed]} He soon began appearing nationally and on television.

Post career[link]

Gregory is number 82 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Standups of all time and has his own star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. There is a grassroots effort afoot to get him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, spearheaded by Radio One host Joe Madison.

Gregory is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Gregory was a former co-host with radio personality Cathy Hughes, and is still a frequent morning guest, on WOL 1450 AM talk radio's "The Power", the flagship station of Hughes' Radio One. He also appears regularly on the nationally syndicated Imus in the Morning program.

Gregory appears as "Mr. Sun" on the television show Wonder Showzen (the third episode, titled "Ocean", aired in 2005). As Chauncey, a puppet character, imbibes a hallucinogenic substance, Mr. Sun warns, "Don't get hooked on imagination, Chauncey. It can lead to terrible, horrible things." Gregory also provides guest commentary on the Wonder Showzen Season One DVD. Large segments of his commentary were intentionally bleeped out, including the names of several dairy companies, as he made potentially slanderous remarks concerning ill effects that the consumption of cow milk has on human beings.

Gregory attended and spoke at the funeral of James Brown on December 30, 2006, in Augusta, Georgia.

Gregory is an occasional guest on the Mark Thompson's "Make It Plain" Sirius Channel 146 Radio Show from 3pm to 6pm PST.

Gregory appeared on The Alex Jones Show on September 14, 2010, and again on March 19, 2012.

Personal life[link]

Gregory met his wife Lillian Smith ^[4] at an African-American club; they married in 1959. They have ten children, including one who died at birth: Michele, Lynne, Pamela, Paula, Stephanie (aka Xenobia), Gregory, Christian, Miss, Ayanna, and Yohance.^[5] In 1973 the Gregorys moved to Plymouth, Massachusetts.^{[citation needed]}

Activism[link]

Political activism[link]

This section includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (March 2012)

Dick Gregory at the Miami Book Fair International of 1984

Active in the civil rights movement, on October 7, 1963, Gregory came to Selma, Alabama and spoke for two hours on a public platform two days before the voter registration drive known as "Freedom Day" (October 7, 1963).^[6]

In 1964, Gregory became more involved in struggles for civil rights, activism against the Vietnam War, economic reform, anti-drug issues, conspiracy theories, and others. As a part of his activism, he went on several hunger strikes.

Gregory began his political career by running against Richard J. Daley for the mayoralty of Chicago in 1967. Though he did not emerge victorious, this would not prove to be the end of his dalliances in electoral politics.

Dick Gregory in 1965

Gregory unsuccessfully ran for President of the United States in 1968 as a write-in candidate of the Freedom and Peace Party, which had broken off from the Peace and Freedom Party. He garnered 47,097 votes (including one from Hunter S. Thompson^[7]) with fellow activist Mark Lane as his running mate in some states, David Frost in others, and Dr. Benjamin Spock in Virginia^[8] and Pennsylvania^[9] garnering more than the party he had left.^[10] The Freedom and Peace Party also ran other candidates, including Beulah Sanders for New York State Senate and Flora Brown for New York State Assembly.^[11] His efforts landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents.

Gregory then wrote the book Write Me In about his presidential campaign. One interesting anecdote therein relates the story of a publicity stunt that came out of Operation Breadbasket in Chicago where the campaign had printed dollar bills with Gregory's image on them, some of which made it into circulation, causing considerable problems, but priceless publicity.

The majority of these bills were quickly seized by the federal government. A large contributing factor to the seizure came from the bills resembling authentic US currency enough that they worked in many dollar-cashing machines of the time. Gregory avoided being charged with a federal crime, later joking that the bills couldn’t really be considered US currency because "everyone knows a black man will never be on a US bill."

Shortly after this time Gregory became an outspoken critic of the Warren Commission findings that President JFK was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. On March 6, 1975, Gregory and assassination researcher Robert Groden appeared on Geraldo Rivera's late night ABC talk show Goodnight America. An important historical event happened that night when the famous Zapruder film of JFK's assassination was shown to the public on TV for the first time in history.^[12] The public's response and outrage to that showing led to the forming of the Hart-Schweiker investigation, which contributed to the Church Committee Investigation on Intelligence Activities by the United States, which resulted in the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation.

Gregory was an outspoken feminist, and in 1978 he joined Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, Margaret Heckler, Barbara Mikulski, and original suffragists to lead the National ERA March for Ratification and Extension, a march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the United States Capitol of over 100,000 on Women's Equality Day (August 26), 1978 to demonstrate for a ratification deadline extension for the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution, and for the ratification of the ERA. The march was ultimately successful in extending the deadline to June 30, 1982, and Gregory joined other activists to the Senate for celebration and victory speeches by pro-ERA Senators, Members of Congress, and activists. The ERA still narrowly failed to be ratified by the extended ratification date, however, but the Women's Movement was largely successful in securing gender equality in the laws and society.

On July 21, 1979, Gregory appeared at the Amandla Festival where Bob Marley, Patti LaBelle, and Eddie Palmieri, amongst others, had performed. Gregory gave a speech before Marley's performance, blaming President Carter, and showing his support for the international Anti-Apartheid movements. Gregory and Mark Lane conducted landmark research into the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which helped move the U.S. House Assassinations Committee to investigate the murder, along with that of John F. Kennedy. Lane was author of conspiracy theory books such as Rush to Judgment. The pair wrote the MLK conspiracy book Code Name Zorro, which postulated that convicted assassin James Earl Ray did not act alone. Gregory has also argued that the moon landing was faked and the commonly accepted account of the 9/11 attacks is incorrect, among other conspiracy theories.^[13][14]

Gregory was an outspoken activist during the US Embassy Hostage Crisis in Iran. In 1980 he traveled to Tehran to attempt to negotiate the hostages' release and engaged in a public hunger strike there, weighing less than 100 pounds (45 kg) when he returned to the United States.

In 1998 Gregory spoke at the celebration of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with President Bill Clinton in attendance. Not long after, the President told Gregory’s long-time friend and P.R. Consultant, Steve Jaffe, “I love Dick Gregory; he is one of the funniest people on the planet.” They spoke of how Gregory had made a comment on Dr. King’s birthday that broke everyone into laughter, when he noted that the President made Speaker Newt Gingrich ride “in the back of the plane,” on an Air Force One trip overseas.

Gregory was diagnosed with lymphoma in late 1999. He said he was treating the cancer with herbs, vitamins, and exercise, which he believes kept the cancer in remission.^[15]

Since the late 1980s, Gregory has been a figure in the health food industry by advocating for a raw fruit and vegetable diet. He wrote the introduction to Viktoras Kulvinskas' book "Survival into the 21st Century". Gregory first became a vegetarian in the 1960s, and has lost a considerable amount of weight by going on extreme fasts, some lasting upwards of 50 days. He developed a diet drink called "Bahamian Diet Nutritional Drink" and went on TV shows advocating for his diet and to help the morbidly obese. He is probably best remembered for his attempts, chronicled in the media on daytime talk shows in early 1988, at helping 1,200 pound (540 kg) Long Island resident Walter Hudson drop nearly 600 pounds (270 kg) in only a few months on a liquid diet. In 2003, Gregory and Cornel West wrote letters on behalf of PETA to Kentucky Fried Chicken's CEO, asking that the company improve their animal-handling procedures.^[16]

At a Civil Rights rally marking the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, Gregory criticized the United States, calling it "the most dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual nation that ever existed in the history of the planet. As we talk now, America is 5 percent of the world's population and consumes 96 percent of the world's hard drugs".^[17]

Gregory announced a hunger strike on September 10, 2010, saying in a commentary published by the Centre for Research on Globalisation in Montreal that he doubted the official U.S. report about the attacks on September 11, 2001. "One thing I know is that the official government story of those events, as well as what took place that day at the Pentagon, is just that, a story. This story is not the truth, but far from it. I was born on October 12, 1932. I am announcing today that I will be consuming only liquids beginning Sunday until my eightieth birthday in 2012 and until the real truth of what truly happened on that day emerges and is publicly known."^[18]

Health Enterprises, Inc.[link]

In 1984 he founded Health Enterprises, Inc., a company that distributed weight loss products. In 1985 Gregory introduced the "Slim-Safe Bahamian Diet", a powdered diet mix.^[19]

Discography[link]

• In Living Black and White (1961)
• East & West (1961)
• Dick Gregory Talks Turkey (1962)
• The Two Sides of Dick Gregory (1963)
• My Brother's Keeper (1963)
• Dick Gregory Running for President (1964)
• So You See... We All Have Problems (1964)
• Dick Gregory On: (1969)
• The Light Side: The Dark Side (1969)
• Dick Gregory's Frankenstein (1970)
• Live at the Village Gate (1970)
• At Kent State (1971)
• Caught in the Act (1974)
• The Best of Dick Gregory (1997)
• 21st Century "State of the Union" (2001)

Books[link]

• Nigger: An Autobiography, with Robert Lipsyte, E.P. Dutton, September 1964. (one account says 1963) (reprinted, Pocket Books, 1965-present)
• Write me in!, Bantam, 1968.
• From the Back of the Bus
• What's Happening?
• The Shadow that Scares Me
• Dick Gregory's Bible Tales, with Commentary, a book of Bible-based humor. ISBN 0-8128-6194-9
• Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' With Mother Nature! ISBN 0-06-080315-0
• (with Shelia P. Moses), Callus on My Soul : A Memoir ISBN 0-7582-0202-4
• Up from Nigger
• No More Lies; The Myth and the Reality of American History
• Dick Gregory's political primer
• (with Mark Lane), Murder in Memphis: The FBI and the Assassination of Martin Luther King
• (with Mel Watkins), African American Humor: The Best Black Comedy from Slavery to Today (Library of Black America)
• Robert Lee Green, Dick Gregory, daring Black leader
• African American Humor: The Best Black Comedy from Slavery to Today (editor) ISBN 1-55652-430-7

Filmography[link]

• "One Bright Shining Moment" (2006)
• The Hot Chick (2002)
• Children of the Struggle (1999)
• Panther (1995)
• Sweet Love, Bitter (1967)

See also[link]

• African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)
• African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968)
• Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement
• Gregory v. Chicago

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Dick Gregory

• Dick Gregory on IMDb
• A short biography from www.dickgregory.com
• Dick Gregory Photographs from the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri–St. Louis
• The Juice on Dick Gregory (dietary habits)
• Dick Gregory's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project
• Booknotes interview with Gregory on Callus on My Soul: A Memoir, March 4, 2001.
• Speech by Dick Gregory given on October 20, 1969. Audio recording. From the University of Alabama's Emphasis Symposium on Contemporary Issues.

Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks in 1955, with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the background
Born	Rosa Louise McCauley (1913-02-04)February 4, 1913 Tuskegee, Alabama, U.S.
Died	October 24, 2005(2005-10-24) (aged 92) Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Occupation	Civil rights activist
Known for	Montgomery Bus Boycott
Signature

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement".^[1]

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Parks' action was not the first of its kind to impact the civil rights issue. Others had taken similar steps, including Lizzie Jennings in 1854, Homer Plessy in 1892, Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, and Claudette Colvin on the same bus system nine months before Parks, but Parks' civil disobedience had the effect of sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.

At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial equality. Nonetheless, she took her action as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years for her action, she suffered for it, losing her job as a seamstress in a local department store. Eventually, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to African-American U.S. Representative John Conyers. After retirement from this position, she wrote an autobiography and lived a largely private life in Detroit. In her final years she suffered from dementia, and became involved in a lawsuit filed on her behalf against American hip-hop duo OutKast on the song "Rosa Parks".

Parks eventually received many honors ranging from the 1979 Spingarn Medal to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman and second non-U.S. government official granted the posthumous honor of lying in honor at the Capitol Rotunda. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 2008.^[2]

Early years[link]

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913, to Leona (Edwards) and James McCauley, respectively a carpenter and a teacher, and was of African-American, Cherokee-Creek,^[3] and Scots-Irish ancestry.^[4] Parks' great-grandfather was a Scottish-Irishman.^{[citation needed]} She was small, even for a child, and she suffered poor health and had chronic tonsillitis. When her parents separated, she moved with her mother to Pine Level, just outside Montgomery, Alabama. There she grew up on a farm with her maternal grandparents, mother, and younger brother Sylvester, and began her lifelong membership in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She attended rural schools^[5] until the age of eleven, then enrolled at the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery where she took academic and vocational courses. Parks then went on to a laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes for secondary education but was forced to drop out to care for her grandmother, and later for her mother, after they became ill.^[6]

Under Jim Crow laws, black and white people were segregated in virtually every aspect of daily life in the South, including public transportation. Bus and train companies did not provide separate vehicles for the different races but did enforce seating policies that allocated separate sections for blacks and whites. School bus transportation was unavailable in any form for black schoolchildren in the South. Parks recalled going to elementary school in Pine Level, where school buses took white students to their new school and black students had to walk to theirs: "I'd see the bus pass every day... But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world."^[7]

Although Parks' autobiography recounts that some of her earliest memories are of the kindness of white strangers, her situation made it impossible to ignore racism. When the Ku Klux Klan marched down the street in front of her house, Parks recalls her grandfather guarding the front door with a shotgun.^[8] The Montgomery Industrial School, founded and staffed by white northerners for black children, was burned twice by arsonists, and its faculty was ostracized by the white community.

In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, a barber from Montgomery, at her mother's house. Raymond was a member of the NAACP, at the time collecting money to support the Scottsboro Boys, a group of black men falsely accused of raping two white women. After her marriage, Rosa took numerous jobs, ranging from domestic worker to hospital aide. At her husband's urging, she finished her high school studies in 1933, at a time when less than 7% of African Americans had a high school diploma. Despite the Jim Crow laws that made political participation by black people difficult, she succeeded in registering to vote on her third try.

In December 1943, Parks became active in the Civil Rights Movement, joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, and was elected volunteer secretary to its president, Edgar Nixon. Of her position, she later said, "I was the only woman there, and they needed a secretary, and I was too timid to say no."^[9] She continued as secretary until 1957. In the 1940s, Parks and her husband were members of the Voters' League. Sometime soon after 1944, she held a brief job at Maxwell Air Force Base, a federally owned area where racial segregation was not allowed, and rode on an integrated trolley. Speaking to her biographer, Parks noted, "You might just say Maxwell opened my eyes up." Parks worked as a housekeeper and seamstress for a white couple, Clifford and Virginia Durr. The politically liberal Durrs became her friends and encouraged—and eventually helped sponsor—Parks to attend the Highlander Folk School, an education center for workers' rights and racial equality in Monteagle, Tennessee, in the summer of 1955.

Many people were moved by the brutal murder^[10] of Emmett Till in August 1955. Parks later recalled that on November 27, 1955—only four days before she refused to give up her seat—she had attended a mass meeting in Montgomery which focused on this case as well as the recent murders of George W. Lee and Lamar Smith. The featured speaker at the meeting was T. R. M. Howard, a black civil rights leader from Mississippi who headed the Regional Council of Negro Leadership.^[11]

Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott[link]

Seat layout on the bus where Parks sat, December 1, 1955.

By refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man, Parks was more clearly in violation of custom than of law. Nonetheless, her refusal amounted to an act of civil disobedience, resulted in her arrest and conviction by a local court, and proved to be the spark for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Montgomery buses: law and prevailing customs[link]

In 1900, Montgomery had passed a city ordinance for the purpose of segregating passengers by race. Conductors were given the power to assign seats to accomplish that purpose. According to the law, no passengers would be required to move or give up their seat and stand if the bus was crowded and no other seats were available. Over time and by custom, however, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the practice of requiring black riders to move whenever there were no white-only seats left.

The first four rows of seats on each Montgomery bus were reserved for white people. Buses had "colored" sections for black people—who made up more than 75% of the bus system's riders—generally in the rear of the bus. These sections were not fixed in size but were determined by the placement of a movable sign. Black people could sit in the middle rows until the white section was full. Then they had to move to seats in the rear, stand, or, if there was no room, leave the bus. Black people were not allowed to sit across the aisle from white people. The driver could move the "colored" section sign, or remove it altogether. If white people were already sitting in the front, black people could board to pay the fare, but then had to disembark and reenter through the rear door. Sometimes, the bus departed before the black customers who had paid could make it to the back entrance.^{[citation needed]}

For years, the black community had complained that the situation was unfair, and Parks was no exception: "My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest...I did a lot of walking in Montgomery."^[5] Parks had her first run-in on the public bus on a rainy day in 1943, when the bus driver, James F. Blake, demanded that she get off the bus and reenter through the back door. As she began to exit by the front door, she dropped her purse. Parks sat down for a moment in a seat for white passengers to pick up her purse. The bus driver was enraged and barely let her step off the bus before speeding off.^{[citation needed]}

Her refusal to move[link]

After a day at work at Montgomery Fair department store, Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus at around 6 p.m., Thursday, December 1, 1955, in downtown Montgomery. She paid her fare and sat in an empty seat in the first row of back seats reserved for blacks in the "colored" section, which was near the middle of the bus and directly behind the ten seats reserved for white passengers. Initially, she had not noticed that the bus driver was the same man, James F. Blake, who had left her in the rain in 1943. As the bus traveled along its regular route, all of the white-only seats in the bus filled up. The bus reached the third stop in front of the Empire Theater, and several white passengers boarded.

The No. 2857 bus on which Parks was riding before she was arrested (a GM "old-look" transit bus, serial number 1132), is now a museum exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum.

Following prevailing practice, bus driver Blake noted that the front of the bus was filled with white passengers and two or three white men were standing. He then moved the "colored" section sign behind Parks and demanded that four black people give up their seats in the middle section so that the white passengers could sit. Years later, in recalling the events of the day, Parks said, "When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night."^[12]

By Parks' account, Blake said, "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats."^[13] Three of them complied. Parks said, "The driver wanted us to stand up, the four of us. We didn't move at the beginning, but he says, 'Let me have these seats.' And the other three people moved, but I didn't."^[14] The black man sitting next to her gave up his seat. Parks moved, but toward the window seat; she did not get up to move to the newly repositioned colored section.^[15] Blake then said, "Why don't you stand up?" Parks responded, "I don't think I should have to stand up." Blake called the police to arrest Parks. When recalling the incident for Eyes on the Prize, a 1987 public television series on the Civil Rights Movement, Parks said, "When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up, and I said, 'No, I'm not.' And he said, 'Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the police and have you arrested.' I said, 'You may do that.'"^[16]

Rosa Parks' arrest

Booking photo of Parks

Booking photo of Parks

Police report on Parks, December 1, 1955, page 1

Police report on Parks, December 1, 1955, page 2

Fingerprint card of Parks

During a 1956 radio interview with Sydney Rogers in West Oakland several months after her arrest, when asked why she had decided not to vacate her bus seat, Parks said, "I would have to know for once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen."^[17]

She also detailed her motivation in her autobiography, My Story:

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.^[18]

When Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her. As the officer took her away, she recalled that she asked, "Why do you push us around?" The officer's response as she remembered it was, "I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest."^[19] She later said, "I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind..."^[14]

Parks was charged with a violation of Chapter 6, Section 11 segregation law of the Montgomery City code,^[20] even though she technically had not taken up a white-only seat—she had been in a colored section.^[21] Edgar Nixon and Clifford Durr bailed Parks out of jail the evening of December 2.^[22]

Montgomery Bus Boycott[link]

That evening, Nixon conferred with Alabama State College professor Jo Ann Robinson about Parks' case. Robinson, a member of the Women's Political Council (WPC), stayed up all night mimeographing over 35,000 handbills announcing a bus boycott. The Women's Political Council was the first group to officially endorse the boycott.

On Sunday, December 4, 1955, plans for the Montgomery Bus Boycott were announced at black churches in the area, and a front-page article in The Montgomery Advertiser helped spread the word. At a church rally that night, those attending agreed unanimously to continue the boycott until they were treated with the level of courtesy they expected, until black drivers were hired, and until seating in the middle of the bus was handled on a first-come basis.

Four days later, Parks was tried on charges of disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. The trial lasted 30 minutes. Parks was found guilty and fined $10, plus $4 in court costs.^[14] Parks appealed her conviction and formally challenged the legality of racial segregation. In a 1992 interview with National Public Radio's Lynn Neary, Parks recalled:

I did not want to be mistreated, I did not want to be deprived of a seat that I had paid for. It was just time... there was opportunity for me to take a stand to express the way I felt about being treated in that manner. I had not planned to get arrested. I had plenty to do without having to end up in jail. But when I had to face that decision, I didn't hesitate to do so because I felt that we had endured that too long. The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became.^[13]

On Monday, December 5, 1955, after the success of the one-day boycott, a group of 16 to 18 people gathered at the Mt. Zion AME Zion Church to discuss boycott strategies. The group agreed that a new organization was needed to lead the boycott effort if it were to continue. Rev. Ralph David Abernathy suggested the name "Montgomery Improvement Association" (MIA).^[23] The name was adopted, and the MIA was formed. Its members elected as their president a relative newcomer to Montgomery, a young and mostly unknown minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.^[24]

That Monday night, 50 leaders of the African American community gathered to discuss the proper actions to be taken in response to Parks' arrest. Edgar Nixon said, "My God, look what segregation has put in my hands!"^[25] Parks was the ideal plaintiff for a test case against city and state segregation laws. While the 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, unwed and pregnant, had been deemed unacceptable to be the center of a civil rights mobilization, King stated that Mrs. Parks was regarded as "one of the finest citizens of Montgomery—not one of the finest Negro citizens, but one of the finest citizens of Montgomery."^[5] Parks was securely married and employed, possessed a quiet and dignified demeanor, and was politically savvy.

The day of Parks' trial — Monday, December 5, 1955 — the WPC distributed the 35,000 leaflets. The handbill read, "We are...asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial ... You can afford to stay out of school for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off the buses Monday."^[26]

It rained that day, but the black community persevered in their boycott. Some rode in carpools, while others traveled in black-operated cabs that charged the same fare as the bus, 10 cents. Most of the remainder of the 40,000 black commuters walked, some as far as 20 miles (30 km). In the end, the boycott lasted for 381 days. Dozens of public buses stood idle for months, severely damaging the bus transit company's finances, until the law requiring segregation on public buses was lifted.

Through her role in sparking the boycott, Parks played an important part in internationalizing the awareness of the plight of African Americans and the civil rights struggle. King wrote in his 1958 book Stride Toward Freedom that Parks' arrest was the precipitating factor, rather than the cause, of the protest: "The cause lay deep in the record of similar injustices."^[27] He stated, "Actually, no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.'"^[28]

Later years[link]

After her arrest, Parks became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement but suffered hardships as a result. She lost her job at the department store, and her husband quit his job after his boss forbade him to talk about his wife or the legal case. Parks traveled and spoke extensively. In 1957, Raymond and Rosa Parks left Montgomery for Hampton, Virginia; mostly because she was unable to find work, but also because of disagreements with King and other leaders of Montgomery's struggling civil rights movement. In Hampton, she found a job as a hostess in an inn at the historically black Hampton Institute. Later that year, after the urging of her brother and sister-in-law, Sylvester & Daisy McCauley, Rosa Parks, her husband Raymond, and her mother Leona McCauley, moved to Detroit, Michigan.

Parks worked as a seamstress until 1965 when African-American U.S. Representative John Conyers hired her as a secretary and receptionist for his congressional office in Detroit. She held this position until she retired in 1988.^[5] In a telephone interview with CNN on October 24, 2005, Conyers recalled, "You treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene — just a very special person ... There was only one Rosa Parks".^[29] Later in life, Parks served as a member of the Board of Advocates of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.^{[citation needed]}

The 1970s was a decade of loss and suffering for Parks, though more due to personal problems than racism or other social issues. Her family was plagued with illness; she and her husband had suffered stomach ulcers for years and both required hospitalization. More serious was when her brother Sylvester, her husband Raymond, and her mother Leona all were diagnosed with cancer within a relatively short period of time, causing Parks to sometimes have to visit three hospitals in the same day. In spite of her fame and constant speaking engagements (most of the money for which, above expenses, she donated to civil rights causes) Parks was not a wealthy woman. She lived on her salary and her husband's pension. Medical bills and time missed from work caused financial strain that required her to accept assistance from church groups and admirers. Her husband died of throat cancer on August 19, 1977 and her brother, her only sibling and to whom she was very close, died of cancer the following November. Personal ordeals caused her to become increasingly removed from the civil rights movement; in her memoir she writes that it was a major blow to her when she learned from a newspaper that Fannie Lou Hamer, once a close friend, had died several months before. An injury from an accidental fall while walking on an icy sidewalk briefly hospitalized Parks with two broken bones, causing her considerable and recurring pain thereafter and convincing her to move into an apartment for senior citizens. There she nursed her mother, Leona Edwards McCauley, through the final stages of her own illnesses (cancer and geriatric dementia) until she died in 1979 at the age of 92.

In 1980 Parks, now widowed and without immediate family, rededicated herself to founding and fund raising for civil rights and educational organizations. She co-founded the Rosa L. Parks Scholarship Foundation for college-bound high school seniors,^[30][31] to which she donated most of her speaker fees. In February 1987 she co-founded, with Elaine Eason Steele, the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, an institute that runs the "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours which introduce young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country. Though her health declined as she entered her seventies, she continued to make as many appearances and devote as much energy as possible to these endeavors.

Parks with the NAACP's highest award, the Spingarn Medal, in 1979

In 1992, Parks published Rosa Parks: My Story, an autobiography aimed at younger readers which details her life leading up to her decision not to give up her seat. In 1995, she published her memoirs, titled Quiet Strength, which focuses on the role that her faith had played in her life. On August 30, 1994, Joseph Skipper, an African-American drug addict, attacked 81-year-old Parks in her home. The incident sparked outrage throughout the United States. After his arrest, Skipper said that he had not known he was in Parks' home but recognized her after entering. Skipper asked, "Hey, aren't you Rosa Parks?" to which she replied, "Yes." She handed him $3 when he demanded money, and an additional $50 when he demanded more. Before fleeing, Skipper struck Parks in the face.^[32] Skipper was arrested and charged with various breaking and entering offenses against Parks and other neighborhood victims. He admitted guilt and, on August 8, 1995, was sentenced to eight to 15 years in prison.^[33] Suffering anxiety upon returning to her too small central Detroit house following the ordeal, she moved into Riverfront Towers, a secure high rise apartment building where she lived for the rest of her life.

In 1994 the Ku Klux Klan applied to sponsor a portion of United States Interstate 55 in Saint Louis County and Jefferson County, near St. Louis, Missouri, for clean up (which allowed them to have signs stating that this section of highway was maintained by the organization). Since the state could not refuse the KKK's sponsorship, the Missouri legislature voted to name the highway section the "Rosa Parks Highway". When asked how she felt about this honor, she is reported to have commented, "It is always nice to be thought of."^[34][35]

In 1999 Parks filmed a cameo appearance for the television series Touched by an Angel. It was to be her last appearance on film as health problems made her increasingly an invalid.

In March 1999, a lawsuit (Rosa Parks v. LaFace Records) was filed on Parks' behalf against American hip-hop duo OutKast and LaFace Records, claiming that the group had illegally used Rosa Parks' name without her permission for the song "Rosa Parks", the most successful radio single of OutKast's 1998 album Aquemini.^[36] The lawsuit was settled April 15, 2005. In the settlement agreement, OutKast and their producer and record labels paid Parks an undisclosed cash settlement and agreed to work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in creating educational programs about the life of Rosa Parks. The record labels and OutKast admitted to no wrongdoing. It is not known whether Parks' legal fees were paid for from her settlement money or by the record companies.^[37]

A comedic scene in the 2002 film Barbershop featured a cantankerous barber, played by Cedric the Entertainer, arguing with co-workers and shop patrons that other African Americans before Parks had resisted giving up their seats in defiance of Jim Crow laws, and that she had received undeserved fame because of her status as an NAACP secretary. Activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton launched a boycott against the film, contending it was "disrespectful", but NAACP president Kweisi Mfume stated he thought the controversy was "overblown."^[38] The scene offended Parks, who boycotted the NAACP 2003 Image Awards ceremony, which Cedric hosted.^[39]

In 2002 Parks received an eviction notice from her $1800 per month apartment due to non-payment of rent. Parks herself was incapable of managing her own financial affairs by this time due to age related physical and mental decline, and her rent was paid from a collection taken by Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit. When her rent again became delinquent and her impending eviction was highly publicized in 2004, executives of the company that owned her apartment building announced that they had forgiven the back rent and that Parks, by then 91 and in extremely poor health, was welcome to live rent free in the building for the remainder of her life.^[40] Allegations that her financial affairs had been mismanaged began during the eviction proceedings and continued after her death among her heirs and various organizations.

Death and funeral[link]

Parks resided in Detroit until she died of natural causes at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005, about 7:00 pm EDT, in her apartment on the east side of the city. She and her husband never had children and she outlived her only sibling. She was survived by her sister-in-law, 13 nieces and nephews and their families, and several cousins, most of them residents of Michigan or Alabama.

City officials in Montgomery and Detroit announced on October 27, 2005, that the front seats of their city buses would be reserved with black ribbons in honor of Parks until her funeral. Parks' coffin was flown to Montgomery and taken in a horse-drawn hearse to the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, where she lay in repose at the altar on October 29, 2005, dressed in the uniform of a church deaconess. A memorial service was held there the following morning. One of the speakers, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said that if it had not been for Parks, she would probably have never become the Secretary of State. In the evening the casket was transported to Washington, D.C., and taken, aboard a bus similar to the one in which she made her protest, to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol.

On October 28, 2005, the United States House of Representatives approved a resolution passed the previous day by the United States Senate to honor Parks by allowing her body to lie in honor in the Capitol. Since the founding of the practice of lying in state, or honor, in the Rotunda in 1852, Parks was the 31st person, the first American who had not been a U.S. government official, and the second non-government official (after Frenchman Pierre L'Enfant) to be paid this tribute. She was also the first woman and the second black person to lie in honor.^[41][42] An estimated 50,000 people viewed the casket there, and the event was broadcast on television on October 31, 2005. This was followed by another memorial service at a different St. Paul AME church in Washington on the afternoon of October 31, 2005.

For two days, she lay in repose at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. Parks' funeral service, seven hours long, was held on Wednesday, November 2, 2005, at the Greater Grace Temple Church in Detroit. After the funeral service, an honor guard from the Michigan National Guard laid the U.S. flag over the casket and carried it to a horse-drawn hearse, which had been intended to carry it, in daylight, to the cemetery. As the hearse passed the thousands of people who had turned out to view the procession, many clapped and cheered loudly and released white balloons. Rosa was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery in the chapel's mausoleum. The chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel just after her death.^[43] Parks had previously prepared and placed a headstone on the selected location with the inscription "Rosa L. Parks, wife, 1913–."

Awards and honors[link]

The Rosa Parks Congressional Gold Medal bears the legend "Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement".

Parks received most of her national accolades very late in life, with relatively few awards and honors being given to her until many decades after the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In 1979, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People awarded Parks the Spingarn Medal,^[44] its highest honor,^[45] and she received the Martin Luther King Jr. Award the next year. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1983 for her achievements in civil rights.^[46] In 1990, she was called at the last moment to be part of the group welcoming Nelson Mandela, who had just been released from his imprisonment in South Africa. Upon spotting her in the reception line, Mandela called out her name and, hugging her, said, "You sustained me while I was in prison all those years."^[47] In 1992, she received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award along with Dr. Benjamin Spock and others at the Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1995, she received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award in Williamsburg, Virginia.

On September 9, 1996, President Bill Clinton presented Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the U.S. executive branch. In 1998, she became the first recipient of the International Freedom Conductor Award given by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. The next year, Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch and received the Detroit-Windsor International Freedom Festival Freedom Award. Parks was a guest of President Bill Clinton during his 1999 State of the Union Address. That year, Time magazine named Parks one of the 20 most influential and iconic figures of the 20th century.^[26] In 2000, her home state awarded her the Alabama Academy of Honor,^[48] as well as the first Governor's Medal of Honor for Extraordinary Courage.^[49] She was awarded two dozen honorary doctorates from universities worldwide, and was made an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

Parks and U.S. President Bill Clinton

The Rosa Parks Library and Museum on the campus of Troy University in Montgomery was dedicated to her on December 1, 2000. It is located on the corner where Parks boarded the famed bus. The most popular items in the museum are the interactive bus arrest of Mrs. Parks and a sculpture of Parks sitting on a bus bench. The documentary Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks received a 2002 nomination for Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject. She collaborated that year in a TV movie of her life starring Angela Bassett.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Parks on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.^[50]

On October 30, 2005, President George W. Bush issued a proclamation ordering that all flags on U.S. public areas both within the country and abroad be flown at half-staff on the day of Parks' funeral.

Interior of the No. 2857 bus on which Parks was riding

Metro Transit in King County, Washington placed posters and stickers dedicating the first forward-facing seat of all its buses in Parks' memory shortly after her death,^[51][52] and the American Public Transportation Association declared December 1, 2005, the 50th anniversary of her arrest, to be a "National Transit Tribute to Rosa Parks Day".^[53] On that anniversary, President George W. Bush signed Pub.L. 109-116, directing that a statue of Parks be placed in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. In signing the resolution directing the Joint Commission on the Library to do so, the President stated:

By placing her statue in the heart of the nation's Capitol, we commemorate her work for a more perfect union, and we commit ourselves to continue to struggle for justice for every American.^[54]

Rosa Parks Transit Center, Detroit

On February 5, 2006, at Super Bowl XL, played at Detroit's Ford Field, long-time Detroit residents Coretta Scott King and Parks were remembered and honored by a moment of silence. The Super Bowl was dedicated to their memory.^{[citation needed]}

In 1976 Detroit renamed 12th Street "Rosa Parks Boulevard."^[55]

A portion of the Interstate 10 freeway in Los Angeles is named in her honor.

In the Los Angeles County MetroRail system, the Imperial Highway/Wilmington station, where the Blue Line connects with the Green Line, has been officially named the "Rosa Parks Station".

Nashville, Tennessee, renamed MetroCenter Boulevard (8th Avenue North) (US 41A and TN 12) in September 2007 as Rosa L. Parks Boulevard.^[56]

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a plaza in the heart of the city is named Rosa Parks Circle.

On July 14, 2009, the Rosa Parks Transit Center opened in Detroit at the corner of Michigan and Cass Avenues.^[57]

See also[link]

	African American portal
	Biography portal

• African American Women, 1960's
• Black Indians in the United States
• Cleveland Court Apartments 620–638
• Elizabeth Jennings Graham
• John Mitchell, Jr. (editor)
• Racism in the United States
• Timeline of the African American Civil Rights Movement

References[link]