Image description: On February 27, a statue of Rosa Parks commissioned by Congress was unveiled in National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol, approximately 100 years after her birth on February 4, 1913.

Rosa Parks, whose arrest in 1955 for refusing to yield her seat on a segregated bus to a white passenger, helped ignite the modern American civil rights movement. This bronze statue shows Parks seated on a rock-like formation of which she seems almost a part, symbolizing her famous refusal to give up her bus seat. 

Photo from the Architect of the Capitol

Image description: This picture was taken at the Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963. It shows Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Mathew Ahmann, Executive Director of the National Catholic Conference for Interrracial Justice, in the crowd.

The march was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in U.S. history, and it was where Dr. King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Photo from the National Archives.