Statues of civil rights activist Rosa Parks and disability rights activist Helen Keller were unveiled at the Alabama State Capitol on Friday, making them the first Alabama women to be honored there.
For six years, the Alabama Women’s Tribute Statue Commission worked to get the statues installed. “Today we gather to lift two legacies, Rosa Parks and Helen Keller. Two women born in Alabama on the soil of this great state with the grit and grace that changed the trajectory of not just our state, but our nation,” Commissioner Tracey Morant Adams said at the ceremony Friday, according to Alabama Reflector.
Rep. Laura Hall, D-Huntsville, is chair of the commission made up of six members. Hall sponsored HB 287, which started the project.
“For the very first time, the grounds of our Capitol will feature statues of women, and what finer examples could there be than Rosa Parks and Helen Keller?” Gov. Kay Ivey asked at the ceremony. “These are two Alabama daughters who were born in small towns who faced extraordinary challenges and yet rose to shape history through quiet strength and unwavering and unwavering conviction.”
Parks is famous for her refusal to give up her seat to a White passenger on a bus. Her act of civil disobedience, on December 1, 1955, led to the Montgomery bus boycott, and ultimately the desegregation of buses in the city.
This furthered the cause of the organization for racial and economic equality in America. But that is not the only thing she did in her fight for equal rights for Black Americans.
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More than a decade before Parks became a civil rights icon for refusing to give up her bus seat, she was a sexual assault investigator. Having joined the Montgomery, Alabama, chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1943, she began work on criminal justice in communities in Alabama. She ensured that Black men were protected from false accusations and lynchings while also seeing to it that Black women who had been sexually assaulted by White men were given opportunities to be heard and to defend themselves in a court of law.
Parks lost her department store job after her 1955 arrest. Her husband also left his job after his employers banned any discussion of the boycott or his wife at work. And amid death threats, Parks decided to move from Montgomery to Detroit with her husband. There, she worked as an administrative aide for Congressman John Conyers, Jr., and helped in finding housing for the homeless. Following her death on October 24, 2005, at age 92, Parks’ body was brought to the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, making her the first woman to lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol.
Parks’ statue, which sits at the front of the Alabama State Capitol near the steps, and near a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, faces Dexter Avenue, the street where she boarded the bus and made history. Parks’ monument is now the first statue of a Black woman on the Capitol lawn.
“I want you to be reminded of her resolve and commitment to step up, take action, powerfully communicating the thinking behind that action,” Julia Knight, the creator of the statue, said at the unveiling. “Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress, she was a dedicated activist.”
The statue of Keller is placed behind the building, facing the Alabama State House. Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile, sponsored SB 365, which made December 1, the day Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat, a state holiday. She also spoke at Friday’s event.
“This is such a historical day for Alabama. For us to unveil the first two women’s statues, but those two women are an African American and a caucasian Alabamian, and that just shows you how far we have come as a state,” Figures said.
