Civil Rights Pioneer

Rosa Parks is escorted by E.D. Nixon, former president of the Alabama NAACP, at the courthouse in Montgomery on March 19, 1956.  (Gene Herrick / AP)

Rosa Parks and E. D. Nixon, former president of the Alabama NAACP, arrive at a court in Montgomery, Ala. in this March 19, 1956 photo.  (Gene Herrick / AP)

Rosa Parks speaks at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga., on Jan. 15, 1969.  (Joe Holloway, Jr. / AP)

A visitor to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., looks at the bus on which civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks was traveling when she refused to give up her seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala. in 1955.  (Paul Warner / AP)

Rosa Parks smiles at a Capitol Hill ceremony on June 15, 1999, where she was honored with the Congressional Gold Medal. Parks, whose act of defiance launched the modern civil rights era, died at her home in Detroit on Monday. She was 92.  (Khue Bui / AP)