Please join MHC staff and Board members on December 1, 2008 at the World Famous Lexington Market Arcade at 10:30am to help celebrate the legacy of Rosa Parks with  Sitting Down to Take a Stand—Remembering Rosa Parks.

In 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger. From this action she became an icon of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, one of the greatest chapters in the history of Civil Rights in this country. Her simple act of defiance, prompted by enduring years of the humiliation of segregation, set the stage for the next decade of activism and propelled Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into the national stage.

Sitting Down to Take a Stand—Remembering Rosa Parks is part of MHC’s ongoing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Remembrance and Reconciliation initiative. The initiative promotes using humanities works—literature, film, art, and theater—to stimulate discussion about issues of race relations.

On December 1st, Actress Gwendolyn Briley Strand will perform from her one-woman Rosa Parks show and local dignitaries will honor Rosa Parks’ actions and her continuing relevancy today. Attendees can tour (from 10am to 1pm) an exhibition displayed a 1950s bus, similar to the one Rosa Parks rode. The exhibition, drawn from the archives of the AFRO-American newspaper, traces her life and actions and their influence through her death in 2005, when she was honored by lying in state in the rotunda of the US Capitol. Also on December 1st, MTA buses in downtown Baltimore will reserve the front seat for Rosa Parks, display a timeline of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and provide bus riders with information about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott..

The 1950s bus with the exhibition will also visit the Orleans Street Branch of the Pratt library from 1:30-3:30 on December 1st . Beginning the next day, the Sitting Down to Take a Stand—Remembering Rosa Parks exhibition will be displayed at the Charles Center Metro Station through February 2009.

Then in January, join MHC on Saturday afternoons at 2pm at the Pratt’s Central Library to watch Civil Rights-themed movies.

Click here for a complete schedule of events or more information about other Rosa Parks related events.

Tags: Lexington Market, Maryland Humanities Council, Rosa Parks, Sitting Down to Take a Stand

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