Rosa Parks Gets a Statue at the Capitol

Rosa Parks became the first black woman to be honored with a life-size statue in the Capitol in Washington, D.C. yesterday. The bronze statue — which captures Parks waiting to be arrested on December 1, 1955, after she refused to give up her seat for a white passenger on a segregated bus in Alabama — was designed by Robert Firmin and sculpted by Eugene Daub. It is the first statue commissioned by Congress in 140 years.