Rosa Parks never coveted fame or celebrity hood, but they came to her, and she was treated as the mother of the civil rights movement and an icon. It is a role she was never entirely comfortable with. On the other hand, history created this reality about her, and she ended up carrying herself decade after decade with a great deal of poise and dignity and courage in confronting what she considered racist affronts or inequalities in any guise. One of the things about Rosa Parks is, because she is part white, part Cherokee Creek Indian and part African American, she never got hung up on "I am a black person." She is not into black politics. She was much more into the sense of the issues of teaching tolerance concerning skin color and religion.  In those ways, she was very high minded in her approach to global politics. It wasn't one of race versus race or screaming at each other, it was one of tolerance.