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Rosa Parks

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The Resume

    (February 4, 1913-October 24, 2005)
    Arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in the segregated South (December 1, 1955 - Montgomery, AL)

Why she might be annoying:

    Details of the incident are inaccurate. She herself said, 'I was not sitting in the front of the bus, as many people have said, and neither was my feet hurting, as many people have said. But...I made up my mind that I would not give in any longer to legally-imposed racial segregation...'
    She had been arrested twelve years earlier for violating another of the city's bus related segregation laws which required African Americans to pay their fares at the front of the bus and then get off and reboard from the rear of the bus. The driver of that bus was the same driver with whom Parks had her confrontation years later.
    She sued the rap duo OutKast for violation of her civil rights when they used her name as the title of a Grammy-winning song on a hit album. She lost the case as a federal judge ruled in favor of the duo citing First Amendment rights.

Why she might not be annoying:

    Growing up, she said: 'We didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Ku Klux Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down.'
    She received the help of a little known clergyman named Martin Luther King, Jr., calling for a boycott of Montgomery's city-owned bus company. The boycott lasted 382 days and brought worldwide attention. A Supreme Court Decision struck down the Montgomery ordinance under which she had been fined, and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation.
    Afterward, she lost her job and, with her husband and mother, she relocated to Detroit in 1957. In 1965, she joined the staff of U.S. Representative John Conyers of Michigan and worked until her retirement in 1988.
    In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, the highest honor a civilian can receive in the United States.
    Her life story was turned into a made-for-TV movie, 'The Rosa Parks Story,' starring Angela Bassett (February 24, 2002).

Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 101 Votes: 32.67% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 65 Votes: 29.23% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 255 Votes: 49.02% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 261 Votes: 44.83% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 255 Votes: 45.88% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 312 Votes: 49.04% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 1018 Votes: 50.59% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 73 Votes: 61.64% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 358 Votes: 55.87% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 93 Votes: 49.46% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 59 Votes: 45.76% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 220 Votes: 54.09% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 170 Votes: 51.76% Annoying
    In 2011, Out of 329 Votes: 52.58% Annoying
    In 2010, Out of 258 Votes: 46.12% Annoying
    In 2009, Out of 217 Votes: 56.68% Annoying
    In 2008, Out of 278 Votes: 77.70% Annoying
    In 2007, Out of 350 Votes: 43.71% Annoying
    In 2006, Out of 297 Votes: 42.42% Annoying
    In 2005, Out of 1968 Votes: 42.33% Annoying
    In 2004, Out of 467 Votes: 42.18% Annoying
    In 2003, Out of 1346 Votes: 43.39% Annoying
    In 2002, Out of 11915 Votes: 35.01% Annoying