Inaugural Rosa Parks Day passes down history
At just 5 years old, Jackson Evans knows who Rosa Parks was.
"She didn't give up her seat to the man who wanted her seat," he said when asked about Parks. "I think she made a hard choice to make things better."
Seated just to Evans' left during a breakfast Saturday morning at St. Paul AME Church was Doris Dozier Crenshaw, a friend of Parks. Crenshaw, dressed in all blue with a black hat, wore a pin that said "I love Rosa Parks."
"She spoke softly, but always with determination," Crenshaw said of Parks.
Saturday was the first Rosa Parks Day celebration in Montgomery which began with a Unity Breakfast at Parks' old church. Lawmakers unanimously passed a bill in March to designate the holiday, which cities and counties can opt to celebrate if they choose to.
Parks is most notable for her act of civil disobedience 63 years ago during which she refused to surrender her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus. Her actions sparked a near 13-month boycott of the bus system and also led to the desegregation of the buses.
But Parks was also known for her work with the children in her community, Crenshaw said.
"I was 12 years old when she got arrested," the now-75-year-old said. "I used to stop by her house everyday on Mill Street. I only lived six blocks away."
When the NAACP received a court order to cease operations in Alabama in 1956, Parks continued to hold meetings with the youth chapter, Crenshaw said.
"She understood the importance of sharing our history," Crenshaw said. "We heard about injustices around the table. Today we don't have conversations. Students are on these machines. We need to encourage these types of meetings."
Brooke and Breanna Bennett, a set of 11-year-old twins, understand the importance of those types of conversations that Crenshaw spoke of. At the Rosa Parks Museum, the budding documentary directors premiered their first film.
Entitled "Architects of Change," the short film highlighted Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and Barbara Cross, a survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham.
Depsite their young age, the Bennetts are excited about accepting the torch of knowledge.
"We can help carry on the history and keep passing it down," Breanna Bennett said.
Kortney Coleman, a junior at Alabama State University, hopes people her age will be more like Parks. The theater major, tapped to portray Parks for the day, stood with her hair pulled back, tortoise-shell rimmed glasses filling her face and a tweed tea-length coat.
"She was an amazing figure," Coleman said. "My generation needs to follow her ability for strength, braveness, to stand up for what is right with composure. We need to take note, and know that we can overcome whatever injustices might come our way today with as much grace as she had."