The country’s first black president stopped to see the bus during a visit to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn on Wednesday, where it is on display and where Obama, seeking a second term in November elections, held a fundraiser.
“I just sat in there for a moment and pondered the courage and tenacity that is part of our very recent history, but is also part of that long line of folks who sometimes are nameless, oftentimes didn’t make the history books, but who constantly insisted on their dignity, their share of the American dream,” he told reporters during a later event.
Parks, an African American woman, became a hero of the civil rights movement when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, triggering a wave of protests against racial segregation.
She passed away in 2005 at the age of 92.
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