Rosa Parks dies at age 92
Rosa Parks, the civil rights activist who helped ignite the fight against segregation laws died at age 92 Monday of natural causes, according to The Washington Post.
In 1955, when Parks was 42 years old, she refused to give up her seat to a white man in the whites-only section of a Montgomery, Ala. city bus. Parks was a seamstress and secretary for the local NAACP at the time, and was fined and jailed for her refusal.
The Jim Crow laws required the separation of blacks and whites in public places in the South and allowed legal discrimination in the North.
Her refusal sparked a boycott of the city's public transportation by tens of thousands of African Americans, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
After more than a year of nationwide attention, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Montgomery's segregated seating law unconstitutional.
Parks and her family moved to Detroit in 1957 because she had difficulty finding work in her native state. From 1965 until 1988, she worked as an aide in the Detroit office of Rep. John Conyers (D - Mich.). Following her retirement, Parks devoted her time to the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, which helps young people in the Detroit area.
Parks wrote several books, received dozens of awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, helped to open a library and museum and addressed the Million Man March in 1995.
"I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die..." Parks said in 1998 in a celebration in her honor.
U.S. Student Association protests cutbacks in loans
The United States Student Association held a National Day of Action on Oct. 19 to protest the proposed cutbacks in federal student loan programs, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Participants in the event made over 1600 telephone calls from 35 states to members of Congress to urge a 'no' vote on the proposed reductions, according to the association's website. Faxes to lawmakers' offices, press conferences, student government resolutions and an online petition raised that number to 4,000 contacts made with members of Congress.
The cutbacks are part of the Budget Reconciliation plan, the government's efforts to reduce the federal budget deficit. The participants in the National Day of Action also criticized the House of Representatives' plans to reauthorize the Higher Education Act to include provisions that will make loans more expensive for students.
The Higher Education Act governs almost all government higher education programs. If the proposed reductions are voted in, they will be the largest cutbacks ever in student loan programs.
