At a press conference earlier this month, Reps. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, and Shomari Figures, D-Ala. introduced legislation to make Rosa Parks Day a federal holiday.
The Rosa Parks Day Act would designate Dec. 1 as a federal holiday marking Parks’ 1955 arrest in Montgomery, Alabama. She refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement.
“At a time when Black history is under attack, it is especially important that we recognize the bravery and heroism of changemakers like Rosa Parks who dared this nation to live up to its highest ideals,” Sewell said. “Honoring Rosa Parks with a new federal holiday will ensure that her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement and to American history are never forgotten.”
While several states have adopted their own holidays honoring Parks, no federal holiday currently recognizes her contribution to the Civil Rights Movement. If established, Rosa Parks Day would become the first federal holiday to honor a woman.
“Nearly 70 years ago, Rosa Parks changed the course of history when she refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery,” Beatty said. “On that day, she sparked a civil rights revolution, challenging our country to deliver on the principles we’re bound to — that all of us are created equal.”
Beatty, who championed Ohio becoming the first state to recognize Dec. 1 as Rosa Parks Day during her time as a state legislator, called for national recognition of “this esteemed American hero” through a new federal holiday.
Figures, a freshman representative whose district includes Montgomery and Parks’ birthplace of Tuskegee, supported the measure. “I am proud to join this legislation designating a national holiday in her honor to ensure her contributions that helped ignite the Civil Rights Movement are never forgotten,” he said.
“By honoring her with a new federal holiday, we can ensure that what happened in Montgomery and Selma and Birmingham is never ever erased or forgotten, no matter how hard some extremists may try,” Sewell said. “Moreover, it will become the first federal holiday to honor a woman, let alone a Black woman.
The bill was introduced on February 4, which would have been Parks’ 112th birthday.
Sewell says that the bill already has 57 cosponsors in the House.
“We look forward to harnessing this momentum to get it across the finish line, and it is our hope that we can do so in a bipartisan way,” Sewell said. “Her quiet, distinguished courage set the stage for the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott and galvanized a movement that changed the very fabric of this nation.”
This article was reprinted with permission from Word In Black and originally published by The Washington Informer.