Beatty to announce legislation to designate 'Rosa Parks Day'

Beatty to announce legislation to designate ‘Rosa Parks Day’

Assistant House Democratic Leader Joyce Beatty, D-Columbus, will hold a press conference to announce legislation designating December 1 as “Rosa Parks Day” in the State of Ohio.  The press conference will be held at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, November 15, 2005 on the Veteran’s Plaza outside the Third Street entrance of the Ohio Statehouse.  A Civil Rights-era bus will be on-site courtesy of the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA). 

Most historians date the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the United States to Dec. 1, 1955, the day Parks, an unknown seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her bus seat.  A young pastor named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. assisted in forming the Montgomery Improvement Association, which called for a boycott of the city-owned bus company.  The boycott lasted 381 days.  Their cause persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the Montgomery ordinance that outlawed racial segregation on public transportation.  Rosa Parks passed away on October 24, 2005, at the age of 92.

“This legislation honors a great American who changed United States’ history relating to the civil rights movement,” said Rep. Beatty.  “This is yet another way to ensure that Rosa Parks’ quiet and peaceful rebellion lives on for years to come.”

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Rain site:  Room 116 of the Ohio Statehouse, located on the first floor on the State Street side of the building.