Group members gathered within the tree shade on the Rosa Parks RTS Downtown Station on Tuesday, alongside with officers from town of Gainesville and Alachua County, to have fun the Civil Rights legacy of Rosa Parks on what would have been her 111th birthday.
Rev. Milford L. Griner, president and founding father of Gainesville’s Rosa Parks Quiet Braveness Committee (RPQCC), additionally took the chance to go the mantle of RPQCC presidency to Bonnie Ok. Burgess, former mayor and commissioner for town of Alachua.
Griner based RPQCC in 2006 after Parks’ dying on Oct. 24, 2005, and Burgess was one of many authentic seven committee members.
The spotlight of Griner’s time as president, he mentioned, was in 2008, when RPQCC partnered with town of Gainesville and RTS to vary the title of the downtown switch station to be devoted in Rosa Parks’ honor. Even years later, each time he sees a bus drive by with a headsign studying “Rosa Parks,” he desires to do a cartwheel.
Burgess mentioned her first order of enterprise is to get the RPQCC members collectively for a gathering to find out priorities. She is stuffed with ardour and concepts, however she mentioned she desires to hearken to what others need to accomplish and transfer with their strengths.
The committee can be in search of new members, and Burgess mentioned she desires to get it on a daily assembly schedule so that folks can put it of their calendars and present as much as become involved. She mentioned since COVID-19, the committee has slipped towards an irregular, digital assembly schedule.
Burgess confused the significance of training and preserving the historical past of civil rights leaders like Parks alive. However she mentioned she doesn’t need to preserve that training hooked up to a single day or month out of the 12 months, nor to a single metropolis in Alachua County.
“A number of occasions they are saying, oh, we’re doing a Black historical past program. They bring about up Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, then individuals get complacent with it,” Burgess mentioned. “I need the complacency to depart. I need it to bear in mind, and it’s not simply within the title, it’s what she stood for, and the way though [Parks has] by no means come to the state of Florida, she’s made an impression. She made an impression on me and my life, and all of the individuals which are round me.”
Although Burgess mentioned Gainesville has been “phenomenal,” beginning with the switch station dedication and carrying on with partnership through the years, one of many concepts Burgess plans to deliver up with the committee is a plan to rotate conferences to completely different municipalities in Alachua County to assist contain individuals from throughout the county.
To broaden the training part past a single civil rights chief, and past even Black historical past, Burgess mentioned she hopes to have the ability to coordinate with different native organizations that target individuals like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Susan B. Anthony.
“We don’t need this committee to face out. At the moment was simply our day as a result of it’s [Parks’] birthday, and we needed to have fun her birthday,” Burgess mentioned.
The Rosa Parks Day occasion was initially scheduled for early December 2024, centered across the day in December 1955 when Parks was arrested for refusing to depart a White Passengers Solely seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus.
Griner, 66, had introduced on the December 2023 Day of Braveness occasion that he can be stepping down because the committee’s president however waited till Tuesday’s occasion to announce Bonnie Ok. Burgess as his substitute.
Griner defined that he was hospitalized with double pneumonia a couple of weeks after the 2023 occasion. Mixed with an present lung situation, the pneumonia completely broken his lungs and voice.
Griner mentioned he has now developed and reached the third stage of Continual Obstructive Pulmonary Illness (COPD), restricted respiratory attributable to lung and airway ailments. He mentioned he’s advancing towards the fourth and ultimate stage, making respiratory more and more tough.
Although Griner mentioned he can be “fading again into the background” to give attention to his well being, he additionally dedicated to remaining concerned, nonetheless dedicated to group involvement and activism.
“Each time there’s one thing that must be mentioned, I’ll say it. Each time there’s one thing that must be achieved, I may not be capable of be current in particular person, however consider me, I will probably be heard from,” Griner mentioned.
After speeches from officers from Alachua County, town of Gainesville, Alachua County Sheriff’s Workplace, Gainesville Police Division, the NAACP, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Fee of Florida and others, Tuesday’s occasion closed with a benediction from Bishop Christopher Stokes, who prayed for power and blessing over Griner.
