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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2015 - 2016
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | January 27, 2015 11:56 AM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Louise Williams Bishop |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Honoring the Legacy and Birthday of Rosa Parks |
| In the near future I plan to re-introduce legislation honoring the life, and birthday of civil rights activist Rosa Parks. Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4, 1913. She married civil rights activist Raymond Parks in 1932, and became active in the American Civil Rights Movement in 1943, becoming secretary of the Montgomery, Alabama National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Mrs. Parks gained national recognition when she refused to give up her seat, in the colored section on a Montgomery city bus, to a white man and was arrested, spurring a 381-day boycott by African Americans of the Montgomery bus system. She became known as the mother of the civil rights movement when her 1956 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case ruled that segregated bus service was unconstitutional, and was grounds for repelling segregation laws. Mrs. Parks continued her service to society in Detroit, Michigan, where she worked in the office of U.S. Representative John Conyers, Jr., as a legislative aide from 1965 to 1988. She lived in Detroit, Michigan from 1957 until her death on October 24, 2005. For her unparalleled pursuit of justice and equality she was awarded the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, in 1979; the Martin Luther King, Jr., Nonviolent Peace Prize in 1980; the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. In February of 2013, hundreds of people and the political elite gathered to celebrate the life of the late Rosa Parks on what would have been her 100th birthday by unveiling a postage stamp in honor just steps away from the Alabama bus on which she stared down segregation nearly 60 years ago. Please join me in recognizing and honoring the life and achievements of iconic civil rights activist Rosa Parks, by cosponsoring this legislation. Thank you in advance for your consideration. |