Photo courtesy of Sen. Levin’s office Sen. Carl Levin speaking at the unveiling of the Rosa Parks Forever Stamp at the Museum of African American History in Detroit on Feb. 4.

On Feb. 4, I was honored to attend a pair of events celebrating the life and legacy of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks with the issue of a U.S. postage stamp on the 100th anniversary of her birth.

It was especially appropriate that these events came at the beginning of Black History Month, and that one event was held at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, where visitors today can sit in the bus seat that Rosa Parks refused to give up, and in doing so, changed the world.

I’m sure you know the story: On Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., after a long day’s work, and took a seat. When all the seats filled up, the bus driver, following the city’s segregationist practice, demanded that Mrs. Parks give up her seat to a white man. She quietly refused, setting off a chain of events that helped end the Jim Crow era of legal discrimination in the South.

Mrs. Parks later moved to Detroit, where she remained active in the civil rights movement and worked for 20 years in the office of Congressman John Conyers.