Mike Levin: “last evening, we lost Rosa Parks. She died at the age of 92. Her personal bravery and self-sacrifice have shaped this…”

“last evening, we lost Rosa Parks. She died at the age of 92. Her personal bravery and self-sacrifice have shaped this Nation's history and she is remembered with reverence and respect by us all. A half century ago, Rosa Parks, the black seamstress whose refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, AL bus to a white man sparked a revolution in American race relations. Rosa Parks decided that she would no longer tolerate the humiliation and demoralization of racial segregation on a bus. In her own words, Rosa Parks said, ``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.'' The strength and spirit of this courageous woman captured the consciousness of not only the American people but the entire world. Rosa Parks's arrest for violating the city's segregation laws was the catalyst for the Montgomery bus, boycott. Her stand on that December day in 1955 was not an isolated incident but part of a lifetime of struggle for equality and justice. Twelve years earlier, in 1943, Rosa Parks had been arrested for violating another one of the city's bus related segregation laws requiring blacks to pay their fares at the front of the bus, then get off of the bus and reboard from the rear of the bus.…”