* WARNING: THIS IS AN UNOFFICIAL, INTRODUCTORY COPY OF THE BILL.
THE OFFICIAL COPY CONSIDERED BY THE CITY COUNCIL IS THE FIRST READER COPY.
INTRODUCTORY*
CITY OF BALTIMORE
COUNCIL BILL R
(Resolution)
Introduced by: President Dixon
A RESOLUTION ENTITLED
A COUNCIL RESOLUTION concerning
Title
Rosa Lee Parks - From the Back of the Bus to the Forefront of the Civil Rights Movement
FOR the purpose of celebrating the life of Rosa Lee Parks, the "mother of the civil rights movement", the champion of the Montgomery Bus boycott that culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, and the recipient of the long-deferred 1999 Congressional Medal of honor; and wishing her a final peaceful journey home.
Body
Recitals
In 1955, Rosa Lee Parks, an active member of the local chapter of the NAACP in Montgomery, Alabama, defied the Jim Crow laws in place since the post- Civil War Reconstruction that required separation of the races in buses, restaurants, and public accommodations throughout the south, by refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, and changed the course of American history.
Her refusal to comply with rules that required blacks to yield their seats to whites led to her arrest which triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who was later to earn a Nobel Peace Prize and a preeminent place in history and in the hearts and consciousness of people of all colors in this country and the world over.
The Montgomery bus boycott took place a year after Baltimore's own Thurgood Marshall won the most important case of the century, Brown v. Board of Education, which ended the legal separation of black and white children in public schools and marked the start of the modern civil rights movement that culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act that banned racial discrimination in public accommodations.
In her writings and public appearances, Mrs. Parks often lamented that historical accounts of her actions on that fateful day perpetuated the mythology "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 far to long."
Dear Rosa, no longer the bus for you but a sweet, "sweet Chariot coming for to carry you Home."
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE, That this Body celebrates the life of Rosa Lee Parks, the "mother of the civil rights movement", the champion of the Montgomery Bus boycott that culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, and the recipient of the long-deferred 1999 Congressional Medal of honor and wishes her a final peaceful journey home.
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That a copy of this Resolution be sent to the Mayor, the family of Rosa Parks, the Baltimore Chapter of the NAACP, and the Mayor's Legislative Liaison to the City Council.
dlr05-0518~intro/26Oct05
ccres/rosa/nf
dlr05-0518~intro/26Oct05
- -
ccres/rosa/nf