Civil rights icon Parks to be inducted into Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame

The late civil rights icon Rosa Parks will be inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame (AWHF) March 6.
Parks will join other prominent women of Alabama in the hall of fame, including Helen Keller, Julia Tutwiler, Amelia Gorgas, Tallulah Bankhead and Mildred Warner.

Founded in 1970, the AWHF is housed in A. Howard Bean Hall on the campus of Judson College in Marion.
The stories of the women in the hall are told through portraits, photographs, letters and bronze plaques.
Known across the world for her refusal to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery Dec. 1, 1955, Parks is credited with launching the subsequent Montgomery bus boycott.
The boycott helped lead the way for the modern civil rights movement and earned her the title “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”

She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.
Parks passed away Oct. 24, 2005, and upon her death, became the first woman to ever lie in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.

Named by TIME magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century,” Parks’ life has inspired people around the world, symbolic of the power and ability of an individual to change the world through a small and simple gesture.

“Rosa Parks was a woman of silent dignity and grace whose life changed the state, the nation and the world,” said Valerie Pope Burnes, AWHF executive secretary and Judson professor of history.
The induction ceremony for Parks will begin at 10:30 a.m. in Alumnae Auditorium on the Judson campus.
Additional information is available on the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame Web site at awhf.org. (JC)