How Should Rosa Parks’s Legacy Be Memorialized?

Lesson by Cierra Kaler-Jones

Statue of Rosa Parks. Source: Architect of the Capitol

In 2013, Congressional leaders unveiled a statue of Mrs. Rosa Parks in the U.S. Capitol to honor her legacy. The statue presents her sitting down, holding her purse tightly — an embodiment of the oft-shared dominant narrative that she was tired so she sat down on the bus. The same day members of Congress gathered to celebrate the statue, the Supreme Court heard arguments challenging provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. The overturning of this ruling has threatened the organizing Rosa Parks did to ensure racial justice and voting rights.

Time and time again, we’ve seen how Rosa Parks’s story has been co-opted and confined to one moment on the bus. But history tells us otherwise. In The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, there are stories that detail how Rosa Parks worked alongside her husband, Raymond, to free and defend the Scottsboro Boys, how she sought justice for sexual assault cases like that of Recy Taylor, and how she participated in anti-apartheid protests. When we look at the truth about Rosa Parks’s life, we see the story of a lifelong activist, organizer, and militant. Yet, the ways she has been memorialized tend to leave out the full story in favor of a sanitized version that upholds a myth of passive resistance.   

Through this lesson, students will explore the question: How should Rosa Parks be remembered?

Essential questions

What stories are communicated through visual literacy (e.g. photos, monuments, documentaries, videos) that are frequently shared about Mrs. Rosa Parks? 

What do those stories tell us about power?

How should Rosa Parks’s legacy be remembered?