Story and photos by Greg Miley, Speakin’ Out News staff writer

Erica Washington presided over the morning’s event celebrating Mrs. Rosa Parks.
Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle
Quisha Bryant, Director of Parking and Public Transit
Kenny Anderson, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
State Rep. Rex Reynolds

The Rosa Parks Committee of Huntsville held its annual Rosa Parks Commemoration on Thursday, December 1, 2022, at the Parking & Public Transit Station, 500 Church Street, beginning at 10:00 a.m. Huntsville shuttle buses were decorated in celebration of Mrs. Parks as they were last year.

For the last five years the Rosa Parks Committee has held the commemoration to celebrate the day, December 1, 1955, that Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus. Erica Washington presided over the event. Speakers from the state, county, and city levels were on the program.

Huntsville Public Transit offered free rides to all riders throughout the day.

The celebration was put on by the Rosa Parks Committee of Huntsville, which was founded by State Representatives Laura Hall, D-Huntsville, and Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, in 2018.

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks born February 4, 1913 was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement”.

Parks died of natural causes on October 24, 2005, at the age of 92, in her apartment on the east side of Detroit. She and her husband never had children and she outlived her only sibling.

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