Trump marks anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat

President Trump on Saturday marked the 62nd anniversary of civil rights icon Rosa Parks’s refusal to move to the back of a Montgomery, Ala., bus — a protest that became a key moment in the civil rights movement. 

“Today our nation is better, our country more just and our people more united because of the bravery of Rosa Parks,” Trump said in a video address posted on his Twitter account and on Facebook.

“Rosa Parks’s legacy continues to inspire our citizens to pursue a better tomorrow and to build a country where every American child — no matter their skin color — can live without fear, dream without limits and take their rightful place in the great story of our nation.”

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Parks, a seamstress in Montgomery, emerged as a crucial figure in the fight for equal rights in 1955 when she refused orders to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger.

Parks was arrested for the act of civil disobedience and was convicted days later of disorderly conduct. 

Parks’s protest and subsequent conviction prompted a 13-month boycott of Montgomery city buses by African-Americans organized by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who went on to be one of the most prominent figures of the civil rights movement.

The Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s ruling in 1956 that bus segregation is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. 

Parks died in 2005 at the age of 92.

Updated on Dec. 4 at 12:00 p.m.