
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 31, 1994                   TAG: 9409010020
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: DETROIT                                LENGTH: Short

CIVIL RIGHTS PIONEER ROSA PARKS ASSAULTED

Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, was assaulted in her bed at home Tuesday night and hospitalized with facial injuries.

Parks, 81, was taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital, where she was being examined late Tuesday. Her condition wasn't immediately known, said hospital spokesman Dennis Archambault.

Parks was attacked in her bed between 8 p.m. and 8:20 p.m., said Lt. V. Coraci. The back door was kicked in and some money was taken, but her home was not ransacked, he said. Police were on their way to the hospital to interview her.

Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title ``mother of the civil rights movement.''

The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress was riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat. Parks refused, despite rules requiring blacks to yield their seats to whites, and was jailed. The arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus line, which resulted in the desegregation of the buses.

- Associated Press

by CNB