Rosa Parks statue gets one step closer to Alabama State Capitol

The Alabama Women’s Tribute Statute Commission Tuesday approved a design for a Rosa Parks statue that will be installed at the top of the steps of the Alabama State Capitol.

The statue, designed by artist Julia Knight, will face people coming up the steps. Parks, whose arrest on a Montgomery city bus in 1955 sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the modern civil rights movement, will be depicted stepping on a platform and looking up.

Knight said she depicted Parks looking up because “she had vision.”

“The more I think about her — her act of rebellion — she knew what she was doing,” Knight said. “She knew where she was going. She knew this was going to go to the Supreme Court, and she was ready for that. She was prepared for that. I personally would like to see her looking up and out.”

Parks had been a civil rights activist for decades when she boarded a segregated bus in downtown Montgomery on Dec. 1, 1955. Her arrest for refusing to surrender her seat to a white man led to the organization of a 382-day boycott of the city’s bus system. It led to the desegregation of the buses in 1956. Though Parks and her husband, Raymond, moved from Montgomery the following year, she returned in 1965 to help lead the final part of the Selma-to-Montgomery march at the Alabama State Capitol.

Knight’s design was selected from 20 others who submitted applications, said Catie Marie Niolet, a Birmingham-based lawyer representing the commission.

The statue will face North Bainbridge Street at a diagonal angle, Knight said during her presentation. According to the proposal, the statue of Parks will be nine feet high and stand on a six-foot tall granite podium. The statue will show Parks placing a foot on a step looking up. Knight that may make it difficult for viewers to see Parks’ face.

The bronze statue will be built by Clark Memorials in Birmingham.  The granite for the base will be sourced from Elberton, Georgia, which Knight said it was the closest to local as she could find.

Rep. Laura Hall, D-Huntsville, the chairwoman of the commission, said that she likes that Parks is looking up.

“I love the fact that she’s stepping into her own,” she said. “All that we are today or that I am today is because of those rebellious acts and her ability and wanting to move to make a difference.”

The Legislature created the commission in 2019; Hall sponsored the bill establishing it. The bill calls for the placement of statues of Parks and the disability rights activist Helen Keller, a native of Tuscumbia, on the grounds of the State Capitol.

The commission is still seeking funding for the Helen Keller statue. Niolet said the commission needed to develop ways to finance the sculpture and ensure that it complies with requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, an independent nonprofit website covering politics and policy in state capitals around the nation.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Rosa Parks statue design chosen for Alabama Statehouse steps