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Google Honors Rosa Parks

The Internet search engine giant Google is paying tribute to civil rights icon Rosa Parks on December 1 with a special graphic.Parks, who lived in Detroit for nearly 50 years before her death in October 2005, is best known for what she failed to do on December 1, 1955:  Give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama to make room for a white passenger.  She was arrested.

Parks was tried and convicted of disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance.  She was also forced to pay $14 dollars in fines and court costs.  The arrest led to the one-day Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Her refusal to give up that bus seat is considered by many to have sparked the civil rights movement in America.

When Rosa Parks died in 2005, her body was allowed to lie in state (honor) in the U.S. Capitol.

The bus Parks was riding that day is now at The Henry Ford in Dearborn.  Cleveland Avenue (the bus route she was taking) in Montgomery, Alabama has since been renamed Rosa Parks Avenue.

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