Never-before-seen photos of Rosa Parks resurface in Montgomery seven decards later

Seven decades after Rosa Parks helped spark the Civil Rights Movement, new photos of her have been made public for the first time.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Seven decades after Rosa Parks was thrust indelibly into American history for refusing to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, new photos of the Civil Rights Movement icon have been made public for the first time, and they illustrate aspects of her legacy that are often overlooked.

The photos were taken by the late Civil Rights photographer Matt Herron, and they depict Parks at the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 — a five-day-long, 54-mile (87-kilometer) trek that is often credited with galvanizing political momentum for the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965.

History lessons tend to define Parks by her act of civil disobedience a decade earlier, on Dec. 1, 1955, which launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott. On Friday, some boycott participants and many of the boycott organizers’ descendants gathered to mark 70 years since the 381-day struggle in Alabama’s capital caught national attention, overthrowing racial segregation on public transportation.

Parks speaks in front of the Alabama State Capitol on March 25, 1965.Matt Herron / Jeannine Herron and Stanford University Libraries via AP fileThe never-before-seen photos released to the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery on Thursday, taken a decade after the boycott, are a reminder that her activism began before and extended well beyond her most well-known act of defiance, said Donna Beisel, the museum’s director.

“This is showing who Ms. Parks was, both as a person and as an activist,” Beisel said.