U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D.-N.Y., announced last week during President Barack Obama’s and Vice President Joseph Biden’s Inaugural Luncheon that a statue of the civil rights icon Rosa Parks will be added to the National Statuary Hall before the end of the year.
Parks will be the first African American woman to have her likeness depicted in the hall, said Schumer, who also was in charge of organizing Obama’s and Biden’s inauguration. Schumer is chairman of the Senate Rules Committee and in that position, he oversees the Capitol’s artwork.
Parks made history when police arrested her on Dec. 1, 1955, for refusing to relinquish her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus.
E. D. Nixon, one of the unsung heroes of the Civil Rights Movement, and Clifford Durr, a white attorney, bailed Parks out of jail.
