This one is for Rosa Parks. It’s called “Take Up Space.” You deserve the space you occupy.

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled.

Parks’ act of defiance and the Montgomery bus boycott became important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a new minister in town at the time.

When she made this protest, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for training activists for workers’ rights and racial equality. She acted as a private citizen “tired of giving in.” Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job as a seamstress in a local department store, and received death threats for years afterwards.

After retirement, Parks wrote her autobiography and continued to insist that the struggle for justice was not over and there was more work to be done. Parks received national recognition, including the NAACP’s 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman and third non-US government official to lie in honor at the Capitol Rotunda.

Adapted from the Wikipedia entry

DESIGN NOTE     The design is based on a photograph of Ms. Parks on a Montgomery bus on December 21, 1956, the day Montgomery’s public transportation system was legally integrated. It was staged by the newspaper.

AP/Montgomery Advertiser

The stripes in this design are inspired by the shirt Ms Parks wears in the photo from 1955. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. isin the background.

National Archives record ID: 306-PSD-65-1882 (Box 93). Source: Ebony Magazine

This is from Wikipedia: “Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled.
Parks’ act of defiance and the Montgomery bus boycott became important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation.”

The design is based on a photograph of Ms. Parks on a Montgomery bus on December 21, 1956, the day Montgomery’s public transportation system was legally integrated.
The stripes in this design are inspired by the shirt Ms Parks wears in this photo from 1955.