PORTLAND, Ore. — This Sunday, TriMet will mark what would have been Rosa Parks' 111th birthday by offering free bus and MAX train rides.
Parks — who was a lifelong activist and known as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement — refused to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. Her actions sparked a successful boycott among Black residents in Alabama, led by Martin Luther King Jr. In 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling that segregated buses were unconstitutional.
"That’s what transit is about today, connecting people, all people to opportunities regardless of their race or economic status. To their hopes and their dreams," said TriMet General Manager Sam Desue Jr.
Board member Keith Edwards helped launch Rosa Parks Transit Equity Day, which is celebrated on Parks' birthday on Feb. 4.
"By not collecting fares on this day, transit rides will hopefully do a little research to find out more about this seamstress who moved the nation by her actions on a bus," Edwards said during a news conference on Friday outside Rosa Parks Elementary School in North Portland.
Parks led the youth division at the Montgomery branch of the NAACP. After her act of defiance on the city bus, she was arrested and found guilty of disorderly conduct. She also lost her job as a seamstress at a department store, while her husband lost his job as a barber at an air force base. In search of work, Parks and her husband traveled to Detroit, Michigan in 1957 where they continued their activism. Parks went on to receive many awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. She died in 2005 at the age of 92.
"I believe the lessons that we learned from Rosa Parks is that not only Black people but any people, when unified and organized, can change laws that are unjust and disparately impact anyone," Edwards said.
TriMet has been waiving fare in honor of Parks' legacy for the past four years.
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