On Sunday, Dec. 1, a new Rosa Parks statue was unveiled in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, 64 years after Parks was arrested for refusing to sacrifice her seat on a public—and segregted—bus. AL.com reports that the life-size bronze statue is 30 feet from where it’s believed Parks boarded that very bus. Parks was arrested after she refused to give her seat to a white man while she was on her way home from work. After her arrest, people boycotted the city’s bus system for close to 400 days.
Notably, some tell Parks’ story as though it was one of coincidence; she was, as some historians tell it, simply an older woman, exhausted from her job as a seamstress, who wanted to sit. Parks, however, was an active organizer and a member of the civil rights movement already.
“People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired,” Parks said in her book Rosa Parks: My Story, as quoted in Ebony, “but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
Sunday also marked the second annual Rosa Parks Day in the state of Alabama. Last year, the state legislature approved the holiday to celebrate her.
"Today, on the second official Rosa Parks Day, we honor a seamstress and a servant, one whose courage ran counter to her physical stature," the city’s first black mayor, Steven Reed, stated. "She was a consummate contributor to equality and did so with a quiet humility that is an example for all of us."
"This statue has been a long time coming and Mrs. Rosa Parks is more than deserving as she represents all of the many foot soldiers who sacrificed their lives and families to make a change," Montgomery County Commission chairman Elton Dean stated on Sunday as reported by ABC News. "This is a great day for Montgomery County. The seeds she planted are ever continuing to be harvested."
Parks, a civil rights icon who died at 92 years old in 2015, also received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.
Here’s a clip of the unveiling.
And here’s an interview with Parks herself, describing the experience back in 1955.