Rosa Parks’ legacy honored by CityLink

PEORIA (25 News Now) - To celebrate Black History Month, CityLink is honoring the life and legacy of Rosa Parks and other prominent figures in history.

On all fixed-route buses, one seat will stay reserved to honor the life and memory of Rosa Parks.

In 1955, after hearing Claudette Colvin’s story of her arrest for refusing to give up her seat, nine months later, Rosa Parks, the then Secretary for the NAACP, decided to do the same and followed suit refusing to give up her seat. This gesture would kick off what is known as the modern Civil Rights movement and the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott, marking the start of desegregation in the Jim Crow south.

The outside of 10 CityLink buses will also have different Black History Month signs recognizing figures like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

CityLink Marketing Director, Emily Watson says she hopes the Rosa Parks reserved seat will help ignite talks from passengers and, ”spur some conversations with people who maybe are of a younger generation and maybe just aren’t familiar with who Rosa Parks is. Hopefully, they will see that seat and ask questions like ‘Who is Rosa Parks?’ ‘What did she do?’ I think that’s part of the reason too. We want people to continue to remember her legacy.”

Also being featured on the outside of the buses are Peoria native and comedian Richard Pryor and Annie Malone, the first Black self-made millionaire who spent her childhood here in Peoria and changed the cosmetology and beauty field.