Bush honours Rosa Parks

2005-10-25 20:52

Washington - US President George W Bush on Tuesday paid homage to the late Rosa Parks, the courageous black seamstress whose defiance aboard a city bus half a century ago sparked the US civil rights movement and helped Martin Luther King jun rise to national prominence.

Speaking at Bolling air force base here, Bush said the United States "honours the memory of one of the most inspiring women of the 20th century, Rosa Parks."

Parks died at her home in Detroit, Michigan on Monday at the age of 92.

On December 1 1955, Parks was jailed and fined $14 for refusing to give up her seat in the middle of a Montgomery, Alabama city bus to a white man who wanted to sit in her row.

At that time, front rows were for whites only, and blacks had to abandon their seats in other rows when all front-row seats were taken and whites were left standing.

Her arrest launched the 382-day Montgomery bus boycott that ran from December 5 1955 to December 20 1956.

During that time, black workers walked to their jobs or paid black-owned taxi companies 10 cents - the same amount as the bus fare - to get to work.

"Her show of defiance was an act of personal courage that moved millions, including a young preacher named Martin Luther King," Bush recalled.

"Rosa Parks's example helped touch off the civil rights movement and transformed America for the better.

She will always have a special place in American history, and our nation thinks of Rosa Parks and her loved ones today," Bush said.

- AFP