POLICE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION FUNDS MUNI HOMAGE
TO ROSA PARKS

From the Municipal Transportation Agency

November 2, 2005

Rosa Parks will be honored today by the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) by having her photo posted at the front seat of every Municipal Railway (Muni) bus.

The posters are being paid for by the San Francisco Police Officers Association (POA).

MTA Board Chairman Cleopatra Vaughns stated, "The MTA is proud to join Mayor Newsom, the community and the POA in honoring Mrs. Parks as a reminder of the continuing need to respect diversity and to fight against discrimination of any kind."

Mrs. Parks, who died last week at the age of 92, was a pioneer in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Her refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955, led to her arrest, a boycott of the bus system by blacks, and a successful U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the law that had made them second-class citizens on the city's transit system. The boycott not only drew national attention, but also brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the forefront of the civil rights movement.

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