Rosa Parks Nets Congress’ Top Honor
President Clinton on Tuesday signed a bill awarding Congress’ highest honor to Rosa Parks, the black woman who refused to give up her seat to a white man in an Alabama bus in 1955, sparking the national battle against segregation.
“Rosa Parks’ short bus trip, and all the distance she has traveled in the years since, have brought the American people ever closer to the promised land that we know it can truly be,” Clinton said in a written statement.
Parks, 86, will receive the Congressional Gold Medal. In January, a frail Parks attended Clinton’s State of the Union address, drawing one of the biggest ovations of the evening.
Clinton said Tuesday that Parks began “a remarkable journey” when she boarded that bus in Montgomery.
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