Yahoo! News has the story from Channel 4 in Detroit.
Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks has died, Local 4 has learned.
Parks, 92, reportedly died around 7 p.m. Monday at St. John Hospital on Detroit’s east side.
Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955 landed her in jail and sparked a bus boycott that is considered the start of the modern civil rights movement. The bus is on display at the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn.
The Detroit Free Press‘ Cassandra Sprattling sums it up well in her lead graf.
When Rosa Parks refused to get up, an entire race of people began to stand up for their rights as human beings.
The entire country will mourn for a woman profoundly changed America for the better.
UPDATE: In Seach Of Utopia has a GREAT LIST of links to blogs paying tribute to Parks. Its own tribute includes these words:
Rosa Parks, you were the spark that helped light a fire. I will never forget what you did, or how it changed my life and so many others. It was your quiet courage that inspired a nation and exposed a system so shameful, that it had to fall.
I will (leave) the obituary to others Rosa. I just want to say thank you. Without you, a lot of us might still be riding on the back of the bus…
What could be more eloquent than that?
UPDATE II: La Shawn Barber’s MUST READ post and extensive weblog links list on Rosa Parks.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.