December 1, 1955 – Montgomery, Alabama (USA). Rosa Parks [age 42] refuses to give up her seat on a bus, starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Rosa Parks
From Wikiipedia: "Rosa Louise McCauley Parks [February 4, 1913-October 24, 2005] was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement, whom the US Congress called 'the first lady of civil rights' & 'the mother of the freedom movement.' On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation. Others had taken similar steps, including Bayard Rustin in 1942, Irene Morgan in 1946, Lillie Mae Bradford in 1951,Sarah Louise Keys in 1952 & the members of the ultimately successful Browder v. Gayle 1956 lawsuit (Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald & Mary Louise Smith) who were arrested in Montgomery for not giving up their bus seats months before Parks. NAACP organizers believed that Parks was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws, although eventually her case became bogged down in the state courts while the Browder v. Gayle case succeeded. /// Parks' act of defiance & the Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized & collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon, president of the local chapter of the NAACP & Martin Luther King, Jr., a new minister in town who gained national prominence in the civil rights movement. At the time, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for training activists for workers' rights & racial equality. She acted as a private citizen 'tired of giving in.' Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job as a seamstress in a local department store & received death threats for years afterwards. /// Shortly after the boycott, she moved to Detroit, where she briefly found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to John Conyers, an African-American US Representative. She was also active in the Black Power movement and the support of political prisoners in the US. After retirement, Parks wrote her autobiography and continued to insist that the struggle for justice was not over & there was more work to be done. In her final years, she suffered from dementia. Parks received national recognition, including the NAACP's 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal & a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman & third non-US government official to lie in honor at the Capitol Rotunda. Her birthday, February 4, and the day she was arrested, December 1, have both become Rosa Parks Day, commemorated in California & Missouri (February 4), & Ohio & Oregon (December 1)."
December 1, 1955 – Montgomery, Alabama (USA). Rosa Parks [age 42] refuses to give up her seat on a bus, starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
| US E U M |  1968 - Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia (USA). Includes King's tomb (in lake in photo), an eternal flame, Rosa Parks room & Mahatma Gandhi room. Click here for additional information. Entry #242 in the "Peace Movement Directory" by James Richard Bennett (2001). (King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and was assassinated in 1968. 
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  October 2005 - Grave of Rosa Louise McCauley Parks & Rosa Parks Chapel, Woodlawn Cemetery, Detroit, Michigan (USA). Inscribed "Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement."
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.jpg) | December 1, 2000 - Rosa Parks Library & Museum, Troy University, Montgomery, Alabama (USA). Dedicated on 45th anniversary of Parks' bus protest at this site. Right image is historical marker in front of the museum. Visited by EWL.
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September 6, 2001 - Statue of Rosa Louise Parks, Ecliptic Park, Rosa Parks Circle, Grand Rapids, Michigan (USA). Park designed by Maya Lin. Intended to depict water as solid, liquid & vapor. "The heart of [the park] is a skating rink that converts into an amphitheater in the warmer months & is lit by tiny fiber-optic lights, which are embedded in its surface & laid out in a pattern representing a constellation of stars as of January 1, 2000."
"Lin's first project incorporating art & architecture in one site. The rings create an optical illusion in which their slight slope also makes the surface of the rink appear to tilt with the earth's curvature."
The park also contains a steaming "Water Table Fountain" [lower image], two small service buildings in steel & concrete, a pair of fountains & short, wandering paths through landscaped mounds of grass that rise & fall in waves about three feet high. Visited by EWL. /// Grand Rapids is famous LibDub video made in & around the park in May 2011.
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| After 2002 - Rosa Parks Bus, Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan (USA). "Montgomery bus #2857 was purchased by Roy Hubert Summerford, who recognized its historic value. It remained hidden for many years to protect it from the KKK and others who would destroy it. The Henry Ford Museum purchased the artifact in October 2001 for $427,919 and restored it. " /// Right image shows President Obama visiting the bus in the museum on April 18, 2012.
Hard to date this unintentional monument. It was not immediately iconic in December 1955 when Parks started the Montgomery Bus Boycott. When & where was the bus "found" (left image)? And when did it first go on display (middle image)?
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|  2009 - Rosa Parks Statue, Rosa Parks Plaza, Dallas, Texas (USA).
"Installed in a new Rosa Parks Plaza, a transportation hub for buses & light rail in the Dallas West End, near Dealy Plaza (where JFK was killed). There is room on the bench for commuters to sit with Rosa for a while... Behind her is a waterfall cascading down a granite wall with a Martin Luther King quote, 'until justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.' Joyce Foreman, the former Dallas Area Rapid Transit BoD member who pushed for the memorial said, 'Being an African American woman and an activist, and trying to make sure that people are heard, when you think of people like Rosa Parks, you think that she sat down to be able to stand up for a position. “It is so important for young people to understand that one person can make a difference if they’re doing the right things toward that objective.' This is the second casting of this sculpture; the first is in the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. /// Information courtesy of Susan Ives.
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 | A R V I N G |  May 10, 2012 - Stone Carving of Rosa Parks, Human Rights Porch, Narthex, Washington National Cathedral, Washington, DC (USA). "The area includes likenesses of Oscar Romero, Eleanor Roosevelt & John T. Walker (first African American bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington once arrested at a protest rally against apartheid at the South African Embassy)... The statue of Rosa Parks [1913-2005] was commissioned along with a carving of Mother Teresa that will be dedicated later this year." /// Right image shows statue of Eleanor Roosevelt which is about two feet (0.6 m) tall & above the archway leading to the west narthex.
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|  February 27, 2013 - Seated Statue of Rosa Parks, Statuary Hall, US Capitol, Washington, DC (USA). "Depicts her waiting to be arrested on Dec. 1, 1955, after she refused to give up her seat for a white passenger on a crowded segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She is seated, dressed in a heavy wool coat & clutching her purse as she looks out of an unseen window waiting for the police...The statue was the first commissioned by Congress in 140 years. It was designed by Robert Firmin & sculptured by Eugene Daub." Dedicated by President Barak Obama & congressional leadership (despite their bitter impasse on US budget & deficit).
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 |  November 2013 - "Icons of the Civil Rights Movement," currently on display in the Borgia Gallery, Elms College, Chicopee, Massachusetts (USA). "Installation of 30 icons created by artist Pamela Chatterton-Purdy. Focuses on the people of the Civil Rights Movement. Includes images of Rosa Parks, the Little Rock Nine & Medgar Evers.
Icons are commonly used in the Eastern Orthodox tradition where Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the saints and Fathers of the Church & other holy people are represented in a style filled with symbols & many layers of meaning, said Martin J. Pion, a professor in the religious studies department at Elms College. 'The process of painting an icon is as much a prayer or meditation as it is a creative act.'
In contemporary use, the word icon refers to something that is significant or an exemplar of some type or genre. 'We could refer to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as an icon of style or fashion or poise,' said Pion, the director of the Institute.
'What Ms. Chatterton-Purdy has created is both of these things. Martin Luther King Jr. is a martyr & an exemplar of commitment to social justice, so it makes sense to create an icon—image of him that follows the artistic rules more or less of the style of icons that you would see in a Greek Orthodox Church for example.'
Chatterton-Purdy has taught art at Bay Path College in Longmeadow, Springfield College & The University of Massachusetts at Amherst & in the public schools of Middleboro & Brookline..." /// This "installation" has been displayed in various places & perhaps has no permanent location.
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February 13 2016 - "Replica" of Rosa Parks Bus, African American Museum & Library, Oakland, California (USA). Included in "latest exhibit 'Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement' [which] became available to the public after 10 years in the making. Exhibit Max was proud to be the creators of the center piece, a 20x8x8 life size replica of the bus Rosa Parks rode on."
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