Was It Worth It?
Rosa Parks Bus Stop Statue

​Posted May 19, 2026, by Janet Wolfe

What It Is

A life-size, bronze statue of Rosa Parks, the American civil rights activist best known for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, despite the segregation laws that required her to do so in 1955.  Her refusal got her arrested, sparked the 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system, and ultimately led to the Supreme Court ruling that desegregated public transportation. 

The statue, which was unveiled in 2019, stands near Court Square Fountain on Dexter Avenue, approximately 30 feet from where Mrs. Parks boarded that bus.

Where It Is

Montgomery, Alabama

When We Went

June 2022

What We Did

Spent a very brief time looking at the statue, reading the plaque, and taking a photo before high-tailing it back to the car.

How Much We Spent

Nothing.  The statue is on a public sidewalk.

How Much Time We Spent There

Not much.  The kids and I spent less than 10 minutes near the statue while my huband waited at the car. 

What We Liked

We liked standing near the spot where such a courageous and significant decision was made.  Although people tend to think that Rosa Parks was simply a meek and tired seamstress, when she made her historic stand on the bus she was already—and had been since 1943—a Civil Rights activist and member of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).  Her defiance was born of experience and strategy, not physical weariness.

What I really enjoyed, though, was that this visit bookended a Rosa Parks experience we had had four years earlier, when we saw what’s known as “The Rosa Parks bus” in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.  There, we not only got to see the actual, fully-restored bus—which itself has an interesting story—that the incident took place on, but we also got to sit in it.

What We Didn't Like

We did not like being approached by panhandlers.  Two separate men approached me and my young children as soon as we stopped at the Rosa Parks statue.  

The first man gave up easily when I said we didn’t have any cash (which was true), but the second one worked very hard—but politely—to convince me to let him take us on a personal walking tour of key Rosa Parks sites for a nominal fee.  I insisted that I didn’t have any money on me, but he was pretty persistent.  

When he finally walked away, we took a quick photo by the statue and hurried back to my husband, who was waiting down the street with the car.  While he was waiting for us, he, too, had been approached by a man, who asked for food and water.  When my husband said that all we had was water, the man walked away in disgust.  

Needless to say, this clouded our experience at the statue.  We were there on a weekday morning.  There weren’t any other people in sight at the time.


Was it worth it? 

I don’t know.  It was pretty cool to see exactly where Mrs. Parks’ historic stand took place, but we didn’t really get to enjoy it and take it all in.  If you’re a fan of history or just really want to see this sight, like we did, I recommend going on a weekend when there’s likely to be more tourists and people around.

For more information, visit https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=143325.  For a map of the location, visit Rosa Parks Bus Stop | Montgomery, AL.