Rosa Parks an American Hero!

Rosa Louise Parks
(February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005)

Every since I was a child the story of Rosa Parks has been told to me.

When February "Black History Month" came around Parks is the image I would conjur up.

I was watching CNN when I first heard that she had died.

As I walk the street today and watching black youth getting on trains, and subways,

I wonder if they even think twice about her legacy!

I doubt it, many young people my age and older are more concerned about self!

They have no idea that we all stand on th e shoulders of those before us.

As black people our success is a direct link to the heroic action like Rosa Parks.

With her passing, we have lost an image and icon of the civil rights movement!

Even in her last days her she was attacked by a member of her own race.

On August 30, 1994, at age eighty one, she was attacked in her Detroit home by Joseph Skipper.

The incident created outrage throughout America. Skipper was arrested and charged with various breaking and entering offenses against Parks and other neighborhood victims.

He confessed to the crime and when recounting the sequence of events said he didn't know he was in Parks’s home but recognized her after entering.

Skipper asked, "Hey, aren't you Rosa Parks?" and 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.

Skipper admitted guilt and on August 8, 1995 was sentenced to eight to fifteen years in prison. Parks notably forgave her assailant and expressed a wish that he could receive rehabilitation instead of imprisonent.


Like Dr. Delores Tucker Mrs Parks also had her issues with hip hop and gangsta rap

In 1999 a lawsuit was filed on her behalf against the popular American hip hop duo OutKast and LaFace Records, claiming that the group had illegally used her name without her permission for their song "Rosa Parks", the most successful radio single of their 1998 album Aquemini.

In 2004, the judge in the case appointed an impartial representative for Parks after her family expressed concerns that her caretakers and her lawyers were pursuing the case based on their own financial interest.

"My auntie would never, ever go to this length to hurt some young artists trying to make it in the world," Parks’s niece, Rhea McCauley, said in an Associated Press interview.

"As a family, our fear is that during her last days Auntie Rosa will be surrounded by strangers trying to make money off of her name."

OutKast was dismissed from the suit in August 2004. Parks’ attorneys and caretaker refiled and named BMG, Arista Records and LaFace Records as the defendants, asking for $5 billion in damages.

The lawsuit was settled on April 15, 2005. In the settlement agreement, OutKast and their producers and record labels agreed to work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in creating educational programs on the life of Rosa Parks. The record labels and OutKast were not made to admit any wrongdoing.