Senate Floor Statement on Legislation to Rename Federal Building for Rosa Parks

Mr. President, I am proud to join with Senator Stabenow in introducing legislation to name the federal building located at 333 Mt. Elliott Street in Detroit, Michigan in honor of Mrs. Rosa Parks, "mother of the civil rights movement." I also want to commend Representative Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick for her leadership in sponsoring this initiative last week in the House.

Rosa Parks is an American heroine. When this gentle warrior decided that she would no longer tolerate the humiliation and demoralization of racial segregation on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, her act of defiance launched the modern civil rights movement in America. By refusing to move to the back of that bus, she inspired a yearlong, citywide bus boycott by African Americans in Montgomery that led to a Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on buses and introduced a young local leader named Martin Luther King to the nation. It was a turning point in American history that challenged the conscience of the country and the world.

Rosa Parks’ stand that day was not an isolated incident but part of a lifetime struggle for equality and justice. Twelve years earlier, for instance, she had been arrested for violating another segregation law, which required African Americans to pay their fares at the front of the bus and then re-board from the rear. In the years that followed her solitary protest, she was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement. In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, which continues to offer young people hands-on opportunities to learn about civil rights in America.

Although Rosa Parks will be forever associated with one day in Montgomery, Alabama, she lived most of her life in my home state of Michigan. She came to Detroit under sad circumstances – harassment and threats on her life – but she built a new life there. We in Michigan are proud to call her one of our own, and we want to recognize her enormous contributions by renaming this federal building in her honor. Appropriately, the building is a historic one, built in 1855 and used as a hospital during the Civil War. This legislation will ensure that the proud legacy of Rosa Parks is properly recognized in Michigan, and I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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