Rosa Parks Museum - The Stop at Montgomery and Moulton

Photo: Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

A stop on Montgomery: Legacy and Civil Rights Road, a free self-guided tour.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and secretary of the local NAACP branch, boarded a city bus at Court Square on her way home from work. When the bus stopped here, in front of the Empire Theatre, the driver ordered her and three other Black riders to give up their seats for a white man. She stayed seated and was arrested.

She was not the first. Months earlier, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin had refused too. With Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise Smith and Susie McDonald, Colvin became a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the case brought by attorney Fred Gray that ended segregation on Montgomery's buses in 1956. Parks's arrest set off the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott, organized by Jo Ann Robinson's Women's Political Council, E.D. Nixon and the city's Black churches.

Troy University built this museum on the theater's site and opened it on December 1, 2000. Find the historical marker at the corner, then step inside to relive that evening. Check the museum's website for hours and admission.

Getting here: Walk about 10 minutes north from the memorial to the corner of Montgomery and Moulton Streets, two blocks west of Court Square.

Did you know?: The bus Rosa Parks rode that evening is preserved at The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan; the museum here uses a replica.

Photo op: From the opposite corner, frame the museum's entrance with the historical marker at the curb, close to where the bus pulled over.

More on Wikipedia: Rosa Parks Museum · Rosa Parks · Montgomery bus boycott · Claudette Colvin

Rosa Parks Museum - The Stop at Montgomery and Moulton

Stops on this tour