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Rosa Parks Forever Stamp Unveiled At North Texas School

Rosa Parks Stamp
(credit: USPS)

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - A civil rights icon is being honored this morning at a Dallas school.

Officials with the United States Postal Service (USPS) will be on hand at Lincoln High School to unveil the new Rosa Parks Forever Stamp.

The unveiling is part of an event, open to the public, which will include a salute to Parks, speeches, a dramatic presentation and songs.

Parks is mostly remembered as a courageous black seamstress who in 1955 was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Alabama. But Parks was no accidental black activist. For more than a decade before the Birmingham bus incident Parks had worked with the NAACP and had a very active and dedicated political life.

Parks strategically planned bus protest led to a citywide boycott of the Birmingham bus system and helped ignite a national civil rights movement.

Less than a year after the boycott Parks, whose husband as subsequently fired from his job and whose entire family was dogged by death threats, was forced from Birmingham. She continued another half-century of activism in Detroit, where she lobbied against the war in Vietnam, American poverty, and other justice issues.

In 1999, Parks body of humanitarian work was honored with the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor.

Of Parks, Dallas Post Office Officer-in-Charge Bobby Collins said, "Her inner strength and calm demeanor have opened doors for many, and removed institutional barriers."

The Rosa Parks Stamp unveiling is part of Lincoln High's Black History Month program. The presentation at the school, located at 2826 Hatcher, begins at 10 a.m.

Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005, at age 92. The U.S. Postal Service issued the stamp honoring her on February 4, which would have been her 100th birthday.

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