Seven decades after Rosa Parks was thrust indelibly into American history for refusing to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, new photos of the Civil Rights Movement icon have been made public for the first time, and they illustrate aspects of her legacy that are often overlooked.
The photos were taken by the late Civil Rights photographer Matt Herron, and they depict Parks at the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 — a five-day-long, 54-mile trek that is often credited with galvanizing political momentum for the US Voting Rights Act of 1965.
History lessons tend to define Parks by her act of civil disobedience a decade earlier, on December 1, 1955, which launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott. On Friday, some boycott participants and many of the boycott organizers’ descendants gathered to mark 70 years since the 381-day struggle in Alabama’s capital caught national attention, overthrowing racial segregation on public transportation…