On January 19th, 2009, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the city of Eugene renamed Eugene Station Plaza to Rosa Parks Plaza, and a life-size bronze sculpture of Rosa Parks was unveiled before hundreds of people. It was one of the first statues of African-American women in Oregon and believed to be the first time a bus station was named in Parks’ honors. The Oregon sculptor Pete Helzer sculpted it, depicting Parks as her young self, looking forward, sitting next to a vacant seat. In addition to Lane Transit District’s $10,000 contribution to the statue’s cost, local businesses, civic organizations, and government agencies donated the remaining $34,000. Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was a seamstress and activist at the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Montgomery, Alabama. When she took the bus home on December 1st, 1955, she sat on the first row of the color section; when the white section got full, the driver asked her to move further to the back. She refused, and a Police officer arrested her. The Women’s Political Council, led by Jo Ann Robinson, decided to use Parks’ arrest and launched the Montgomery bus boycott. The African American community in Montgomery boycotted public bus transportation for 381 days till the US Supreme Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle stated that transportation segregation is unconstitutional. Parks became an icon of the civil rights movement and dedicated her life to advocating for justice and equality. Read more...