TROY News Center

MONTGOMERY—Troy University’s Rosa Parks Museum will host an exhibit this month featuring a selection of paintings by local artist Pamela Boggs of Montgomery.

Exploring a wide range of themes and subject matters with a unique visual style, “Truth & Spirit: The Paintings of Pamela Boggs,” will be on display inside the exhibit hall from May 6 to June 28.

Part of the long and honored tradition of self-taught artists in Alabama, Boggs’ paintings draw viewers into a greater understanding of life’s joys, struggles and mysteries through the representation of dreams, visions and events from everyday life, said Daniel Neil, curator of the Rosa Parks Museum.

“Ms. Boggs’ compositions draw on her deep personal spiritual convictions and the role that ancestors play in shaping our contemporary lives,” Neil said. “The descendant of spiritual teachers from both Saint Kitts B.V.I in the West Indies and the Muskogee peoples (Creek Nation) from Alabama, Ms. Boggs’ work resonates with a profound respect for the role that forbearers play in the lives of their children.”

The exhibit hall at the Rosa Parks Museum is free and open to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday.
 
For more information on this exhibit or other upcoming contact Daniel Neil at (334) 241-8701.

The painting “Jubilee” is among several works by local artist Pamela Boggs of Montgomery on display in May at the Rosa Parks Museum. “Truth & Spirit: The Paintings of Pamela Boggs,” will be on display inside the exhibit hall from May 6 to June 28.

MONTGOMERY—Troy University will take part in the worldwide celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on Tuesday, April 16, by hosting readings of the letter in Montgomery and Dothan.

Organized by the Birmingham Public Library, the worldwide celebration marks the 50^th anniversary of the day King began writing his famous open letter. Public readings of the letter are scheduled around the world at schools, museums, churches and other locations.

Troy University will join the celebration with readings inside the Rosa Parks Museum auditorium on the Montgomery Campus and on the steps of the Library/Technology Building at the Dothan Campus. Both events start at noon and are open to the public.

Written from a Birmingham jail cell after King’s arrest during a non-violent protest, the letter was a response to a letter by eight concerned white pastors who felt it was not an appropriate time for King to lead demonstrations.

For more information on the TROY readings, contact Georgette Norman at the Rosa Parks Museum at  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  or Dr. Marty Olliff at the Dothan Campus at  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

For more on the worldwide celebration, visit http://www.bplonline.org/programs/1963/Letter.aspx.

MONTGOMERY--What’s in a name? To answer that question, 16-year-old Rosa Park from South Korea travelled across the world to Troy University’s Montgomery Campus to learn more about her famous namesake.

Park, a 9^th grader in her hometown of Seoul, was named by her parents in honor of Rosa Parks, whose 1955 arrest aboard a city bus helped launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Park and her mother recently spent a week at TROY’s Rosa Parks Museum, volunteering, studying and becoming better acquainted with the woman with whom she shares a name.

“When I was little, I really didn’t understand the origin of my name,” Park said. “But I started to research her and learned that she was an amazing woman who changed the world.”

Junglim Lee, Park’s mother, said she and her husband were inspired to name their daughter after Rosa Parks while they were living in Tuscaloosa years earlier. Her husband, who has the surname Park, was an MBA student at the University of Alabama, and Lee said that during that time they first learned about the Civil Rights movement in Alabama.

They were particularly inspired by the courage of Rosa Parks, Lee said.

“I would like her to grow up and have the character and dignity of Rosa Parks,” Lee said of her daughter.

Although some details of the African-American Civil Rights Movement are taught in Korean schools, Park said she felt inspired to journey to the U.S to learn more about the movement, and Rosa Parks, firsthand. Her stop in Montgomery in February was part of a longer trip that went on to include stops in Atlanta and Harlem.

“It is a great honor to be named after Rosa Parks,” she said. “She is a woman who made a choice and the whole world changed.”

Georgette Norman, director of the Rosa Parks Museum, said Park and her mother first contacted the museum via email before making the trip. Norman said she was excited to meet Park in person, and said Park spent several hours each day at the museum studying Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

“I was just so impressed, not only with her, but also her mother, that they would want to come here and explore her namesake,” Norman said.

Park has become a member of the museum’s youth ambassador program, and will carry information about Rosa Parks back to Korea to share with her high school and local library.

“We definitely plan on keeping in touch with her,” Norman said.

Rosa Park, right, and her mother, Junglim Lee, pose with a bust of Civil Rights leader Rosa Parks at Troy University’s Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery. Park, a 16-year-old from Seoul, South Korea, was named by her parents in honor of Rosa Parks, and she and her mother recently spent a week at the museum to learn more about her namesake.

MONTGOMERY, AL—U.S. Postal Service officials will unveil a new historic Forever Stamp honoring civil rights leader Rosa Parks at the site of her famous arrest during a 100^th birthday celebration for Ms. Parks on Monday, Feb. 4, hosted by Troy University’s Rosa Parks Museum in historic downtown Montgomery, Alabama.

The event in Montgomery will be held in conjunction with two additional events on the same day in Michigan. The Charles Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit and The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn will join the Montgomery Rosa Parks Museum in celebrating the unveiling of the commemorative stamp on this historic occasion.

The three events are expected to draw stamp collectors, admirers and civil rights leaders from all over the country.

Parks, whose December 1, 1955 arrest aboard a Montgomery city bus served as a catalyst for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, is being honored by the U.S. Postal Service on her centennial birthday with a Forever Stamp, which is always equal in value to the current First Class-Mail one-ounce price.

In Montgomery, Bridgett Carol, the Director of Marketing for the U.S. Postal Service Alabama District and Donnie Snipes, Postmaster for Montgomery, will unveil the new Rosa Parks stamp during the celebration of Parks’ 100^th birthday, which will also feature, art, poetry and reflection on Parks’ life and accomplishments.

The Montgomery celebration event will also feature:

     • Award-winning poet Nikky Finney reading her poem “Red Velvet,” which is about Rosa Parks.

     • Dr. Riche’ Richardson, an associate professor at the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University, will present a lecture entitled “Rosa Parks at 100.”

     • Museum Director Georgette Norman and Curator Daniel Neil will present the “Rosa Parks 100^th Birthday Wishes Project.” A collection of more than 1,400 “wishes” for the future of the city of Montgomery and the nation inspired by Parks’ life. Many of these “wishes” have been turned into a series of silkscreen posters, which will be presented to local elected officials and leaders for display around Montgomery.

The celebration event will be held at 6 p.m. at Whitley Hall on Troy University’s Montgomery Campus. Admission is free and open to the public and press is welcome to attend.

About the Montgomery Rosa Parks Museum:

Constructed on the site of the Empire Theatre where Rosa Parks was famously arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery Bus, the Rosa Parks Museum opened in December 2000 with the mission of preserving and interpreting the story and lasting legacy of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

For more information or about this or other museum events, contact Museum Director Georgette Norman at (334) 241-8608, or email at  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit http://www.troy.edu/rosaparks.

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MONTGOMERY--Author Jeanne Theoharis will read from and discuss her new book, "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks," during an appearance at Troy University's Rosa Parks Museum on Thursday, Jan. 31, at 6 p.m.
 
Theoharis, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, will speak inside the museum auditorium. Admission is free and open to the public.
 
"The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks" examines Parks’ six decades of activism, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement.
 
Presenting a corrective to the popular notion of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress who, with a single act, birthed the modern civil rights movement, Theoharis provides a revealing window into Parks' politics and years of activism. She shows readers how this civil rights movement radical sought--for more than a half a century--to expose and eradicate the American racial-caste system in jobs, schools, public services, and criminal justice.
 
Theoharis received an AB in Afro-American studies from Harvard College and a PhD in American culture from the University of Michigan. She is the author or co-author of four books and articles on the black freedom struggle.
 
For more information about this or other museum events, contact Museum Director Georgette Norman at (334) 241-8608, or  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .