THE MOUNTAINTOP

Rosa Parks’ refusal to let a White person take her seat on a segregated bus lead to her becoming an international icon of resistance. She was also active in the Black Power movement and the support of political prisoners in the US. After retirement, Parks wrote an autobiography and continued to insist that the struggle for justice was not over and there was more work to be done. Parks received national recognition, including the NAACP's 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman and third non-US government official to lie in honor at the Capitol Rotunda. 

Rosa Parks during the 1999 Congressional Medal of

Freedom Ceremony