Sewell to try again to establish federal holiday in memory of Rosa Parks

Photo from the Office of U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell

Alabama U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-7th District) is planning to try once again to establish a federal holiday in memory of Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks.

Tomorrow, she is scheduled to announce that she will introduce a bill in the U.S. House to make December 1 an annual federal holiday. Newly-elected Alabama U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures (D-2nd District) and other U.S. House members are expected to join her.

December 1 is significant because on that day in 1955, Parks was arrested in Montgomery for refusing to give up her seat on city bus to a white passenger.  Her arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which is considered a key event in the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement.

Sewell has tried to get a bill passed before but it hasn’t made it out of Congress.

Historically, bills establishing federal holidays have been difficult to get passed. In 2021, Juneteenth became the latest federal holiday in the U.S., and it was the first to be approved since Martin Luther King Junior Day in 1983, almost 40 years earlier.

Rosa Parks lived from 1913 to 2005.