Rosa Parks: The story behind her sitting down.

By Diane McWhorter
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2005, at 4:48 PM PT

Rosa Parks, 1913-2005
My favorite image of Rosa Parks, who died Monday at the age of 92, is of the confrontation between her and a policeman on that auspicious afternoon of Dec. 1, 1955, when she refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Ala. After the officer had instructed her to "make it light on yourself" and give up her seat to a standing white man, she later said, she asked him, "Why do you push us around?" And he had given an honest answer: "I don't know." But then he explained that he had to arrest her anyway (even though she was not in technical violation of the city's segregation laws, but that's a whole other tangent of this rich saga). And so did history turn. In support of Parks' defiance, the black citizens of Montgomery boycotted the city buses until segregated seating was abolished, one whole year later. And so was born what is still known as the modern civil rights movement.