Rosa Parks Awarded Congressional Medal

Lawmakers voted to give civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, 86, a Congressional Gold Medal, its highest civilian award, for an act of defiance more than 40 years ago. Often hailed as the “first lady” or “mother” of the civil rights movement, Parks refused in Montgomery, Ala., to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated city bus. Her arrest set off a lengthy bus boycott by blacks that lasted until the Supreme Court declared Montgomery’s bus segregation law unconstitutional and it was changed. The boycott was led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a local minister at the time.