Rosa Parks' lawyer dead at 84

Charles Langford, former Alabama state senator and civil rights activist, died Sunday, February 11, in his sleep. Langford passed the Alabama State Bar exam in 1953 and opened an office in Montgomery. In 1955, he represented Rosa Parks after she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. Her arrest prompted the Montgomery bus boycott led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. which led to desegregation on public transportation. Langford represented Arlam Carr Jr. in a 1964 suit that desegregated Montgomery's public schools. Langford was elected to the Alabama House in 1976 and the Senate in 1982, where he served five terms before retiring in 2002. In 1993, he represented black legislators in a lawsuit that ended the flying of the Confederate battle flag on the state Capitol dome. Langford was 84.

International Herald Tribune, Associated Press