The Washington National Cathedral is preparing to devote a new statue of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks in a section of the church dedicated to human rights. The new sculpture will be installed on Thursday by the Episcopal cathedral with a ceremony of evening prayer songs. Parks’ statue will join others on the cathedral’s Human Rights Porch, which celebrates those who struggled to bring equality and social justice to all people. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt is included in the figures.
Rhea McCauley, one of Parks’ nieces, will join the ceremony, as well as Elaine Eason Steele, co-founder of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. Parks is famously known for her refusal to give up her Montgomery, Ala., bus seat to a white passenger in 1955, which is considered a key moment in the civil rights movement against racial segregation in the Jim Crow south.
