February 4 (Missouri and Massachusetts), the 1st Monday after February 4 (Michigan and California), or December 1 (Alabama, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Tennessee.)
Frequency
Annual
Rosa Parks Day is a holiday in honor of the civil rights leaderRosa Parks, celebrated in the U.S. states ofMissouri andMassachusetts on her birthday, February 4, inMichigan andCalifornia on the first Monday after her birthday, and inOhio,Texas,Alabama,Tennessee,Oregon and several cities and counties on the day she was arrested, December 1.
Rosa Parks Day was created by the Michigan State Legislature and first celebrated in 1998.[1] The California State Legislature followed suit in 2000.[2] The holiday was first designated in the U.S. state ofOhio championed byJoyce Beatty, advocate who helped Ohio's legislation pass to honor the late leader.[3] It is also celebrated by the Columbus Ohio bus system (COTA) with a special tribute to the late civil rights leader.[4] As of 2014, Missouri GovernorJay Nixon proclaimed Rosa Parks Day official in the state.[5] In 2014, Oregon governorJohn Kitzhaber declared that Oregon would celebrate its first Rosa Parks Day. In 2021, the Texas Legislature passed HB 3481, recognizing December 1 as Rosa Parks Day in the state.[6] On January 8, 2025, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey Signed Bill H.3075 setting aside February 4 as an annual recognition for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. AfterJuneteenth became a federal holiday, there are growing calls for this day to also be observed at the federal level. On September 3, 2021, HR 5111 proposes that this day be added to the list of federal holidays.[7]
The holiday was first observed on February 4, 2000, and every year thereafter on the first Monday following February 4, created by an act of the California legislature.[8]
Seat layout on the bus where Parks sat, December 1, 1955
Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was aseamstress by profession; she was also the secretary for the Montgomery chapter of theNAACP. Twelve years before her history-making arrest, Parks was stopped from boarding a city bus by driverJames F. Blake, who ordered her to board at the back door and then drove off without her. Parks vowed never again to ride a bus driven by Blake. As a member of the NAACP, Parks was an investigator assigned to cases of sexual assault. In 1945, she was sent to Abbeville, Alabama, to investigate the gang rape ofRecy Taylor. The protest that arose around the Taylor case was the first instance of a nationwide civil rights protest, and it laid the groundwork for the Montgomery bus boycott.[19]
In 1955, Parks completed a course in "Race Relations" at theHighlander Folk School in Tennessee wherenonviolentcivil disobedience had been discussed as a tactic. On December 1, 1955, Parks was sitting in the frontmost row for black people. When a Caucasian man boarded the bus, the bus driver told everyone in her row to move back. At that moment, Parks realized that she was again on a bus driven by Blake. While all of the other black people in her row complied, Parks refused, and was arrested[20] for failing to obey the driver's seat assignments, as city ordinances did not explicitly mandate segregation but did give the bus driver authority to assign seats. Found guilty on December 5,[21] Parks was fined $10 plus a court cost of $4,[22] but she appealed.
Parks' action gained notoriety leading to theMontgomery bus boycott, which was a seminal event in thecivil rights movement, and was a political and socialprotest campaign against the policy ofracial segregation on the public transit system ofMontgomery,Alabama. The campaign lasted from December 1, 1955, to December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling,Browder v. Gayle, took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.[23] Many important figures in the civil rights movement took part in the boycott, including ReverendMartin Luther King Jr. andRalph Abernathy. The 381-day boycott almost bankrupted the bus company and effectively made segregation in buses unconstitutional and illegal.
^McGuire, Danielle L. (2010).At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance- A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. Random House. p. 8 and 39.ISBN978-0-307-26906-5.
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