*A lot of folks would say it’s long overdue, but the reality is that it finally happened. We’re referring to Rosa Parks being honored with a statue.
The Parks statue was unveiled in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, on Sunday (12-01-19), 64 years to the day she was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a city bus.
Also, if you weren’t aware, Sunday was the second annual Rosa Parks Day in Alabama, after the Legislature approved the honor for the civil rights icon last year.
Events were slated to take place throughout the weekend, including the dedication of a statue Sunday afternoon.
“Today, on the second official Rosa Parks Day, we honor a seamstress and a servant, one whose courage ran counter to her physical stature,” said Mayor Steven Reed, the city’s first African American mayor. “She was a consummate contributor to equality and did so with a quiet humility that is an example for all of us.”
“No person ever stood so tall,” Gov. Kay Ivey said, “as did Rosa Parks when she sat down.”
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Also on hand for the unveiling was Mary Louise Smith — she’s one of the original plaintiffs in the Browder vs. Gayle case that ultimately desegregated buses in Montgomery a year after Parks was arrested. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision after the city of Montgomery and the state of Alabama appealed the original ruling, declaring segregated buses were unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
On Dec. 1, 1955 … Rosa Parks refused to follow a city bus driver’s order to surrender her seat — which was already in the “colored section” — to a white passenger because the front part of the bus was already full. She stood her ground and got taken to jail for it.
Her refusal and the subsequent arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycotts, which lasted 381 days … and severely hurt the transit companies’ bottom line. The city eventually changed its segregation bus law once SCOTUS weighed in the following year.
Parks died in 2005 at the age of 92.
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