On the anniversary of an historic Civil Rights movement, GRTC will pay special tribute to Rosa Parks on Saturday, December 1.
Mrs. Parks is most well-known for her act of defiance on a Montgomery, AL bus on December 1, 1955 that changed the course of history. On that date, Mrs. Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. She was arrested and fined. Four days later, in response to Mrs. Parks’ arrest, a year-long bus boycott began. It ended when the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public transportation was illegal.
Mrs. Parks, the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” will be honored by GRTC in a fitting tribute by reserving the first passenger seat on every GRTC bus on the anniversary, Saturday, December 1, 2018. Each of these seats will have a commemorative sign displayed on them, honoring both Mrs. Parks’ legacy and her dedication to the Civil Rights Movement. Operators will keep bus headlights on all day to represent her light, and the bus electronic header signs will rotate with a special message honoring Rosa Parks.
Mrs. Parks was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, AL. She passed away at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005 in Detroit, MI, becoming the first woman in American history to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.
A dozen years before Parks triggered desegregation of public transit, Catherine Jones Coleman of Richmond, Virginia also refused to move to the back of a Richmond bus in March 1943. Coleman was also arrested, like Parks, and fined $5 and court costs. Rosa Parks represented the culmination of decades of similar acts of defiance for Civil Rights.
