Buses Honor Rosa Parks

WNYC News | Jul 12, 2010

New York, NY —

Fifty years ago today, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. Here in the city today, bus seats are being reserved in her honor.

On busses run by the MTA in the city, and on Long Island, the headlights will be left on to honor the late civil rights leader, and the seat directly behind the bus driver will be symbolically saved for her. Above the seat, a poster will be displayed with Parks' photo, and the phrase, It All Started On A Bus.

Westchester County's busses will also reserve a seat for Parks. Dozens of bus systems across the country will participate in the tribute. Parks' arrest on December 1, 1955, for violating segregation laws, sparked a bus boycott and was a watershed moment for the country's civil rights movement.

Rosa Parks died in October at the age of 92. For WNYC, i'm Amy Eddings.

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