Rights Leader Rosa Parks Attacked -- Robber Injures 81-Year-Old At Her Home, Flees With $53

DETROIT - Revered civil-rights figure Rosa Parks spent the night under police protection after she was robbed of $53 and assaulted in her home.

Parks, 81, was attacked about 8 last night. She was treated at a hospital for bruises to her face and chest and released a few hours later.

Parks was upstairs in her home when she heard a noise downstairs and went to investigate, said Police Chief Isaiah McKinnon. She found a man inside her house, reeking of alcohol, he said.

Her back door had been knocked off its hinges. The man told her someone else had knocked down the door and he was there to protect her, and then he hit her, McKinnon said.

McKinnon said the assailant, who remained at large today, probably did not know who Parks was.

Police will provide security for Parks indefinitely, he said.

Parks was a 42-year-old seamstress in Montgomery, Ala., when she committed an act of defiance that would change the course of American history and earn her the title "mother of the civil-rights movement."

On Dec. 1, 1955, a white man demanded that Parks relinquish her seat on a city bus. Jim Crow laws in effect at the time required separation of the races in public areas throughout the South.

Parks refused, despite rules requiring blacks to yield seats to whites, and was jailed. The arrest triggered a 381-day bus boycott which resulted in the desegregation of the bus line.

The boycott, which came one year after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision that separate schools for blacks and whites were inherently unequal, marked the start of the modern civil-rights movement.

Parks moved to Detroit in 1957.

A family friend who visited Parks in her hospital room last night said Parks was in good spirits and expressed no bitterness or anger toward her assailant.

"That's not who Rosa is," said the woman, who asked for anonymity. "Other people there (in the room) were more angry than she was. But Rosa always tries to look on the positive side."

"Who in their sick mind would bother an 81-year-old woman who has been an asset to the community all of her life?" said Annette Pointer, a neighbor. "I cannot believe it."

Horace Sheffield, who participated in civil-rights demonstrations in Montgomery with Parks, said: "Anyone who could attack her is beyond the pale. This is senseless."

McKinnon, who visited Parks in the hospital, said: "We're talking about a lady who's responsible for changing the course of our country. It's inconceivable and totally disrespectful to her and what she stands for."