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Rosa Parks Museum and Library Dedicated

Officials at Troy State University/Montgomery in Alabama had intended to put a parking lot on the corner where Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955, for refusing to move to the rear of a bus. Then they noticed how many people were stopping to read the historical plaque about the incident, which triggered the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott.

They reconsidered their plan, and the result is the three-story, $10-million Rosa Parks Museum and Library, which was dedicated December 1—45 years to the day after that seminal event in the civil rights movement. Parks, 87 and in a wheelchair, came in from Detroit for the occasion, the Mobile Register reported December 2. She was joined by Coretta Scott King and Juanita Abernathy, widows of the civil rights leaders; the Rev. Jesse Jackson; author Maya Angelou; and other dignitaries.

The 23,000-volume library, the main resource center for the university’s 3,100 students, is housed on the second and third floors of the 55,000-square-foot building. On the first floor is the museum, which includes a life-size bronze statue of Parks on a bus seat—with an empty seat next to her where visitors can sit and have their picture taken.

Posted December 11, 2000.

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