A Rosa by any other name....

     Sparks are flying here in Montgomery over the proposed renaming of a Library branch.
     Right now it is named after the street on which it is located:
Rosa Parks Avenue.
     It is called the Rosa Parks Avenue Branch of the Montgomery Public Library.
     It used to be called the Cleveland Avenue Branch, but was changed when the street was named in honor of Mrs. Parks.
     The Library board, and it seems, a majority of the people in the neighborhood, favor dedicating the library in honor of the first black librarian in the city. It would become the Bertha Pleasant Williams branch.
     Simply, no?
     No. 
     Race is never far below the surface in all things Montgomery, and Rep. Alvin Holmes (D-Montgomery) and some others are loudly protesting the "removal" of Rosa Park's name.
     Mayor Todd Strange offered a King Solomon solution when he was a guest on CBS 8 This Morning. He proposed adding Williams' name to the branch with a hyphen.

     But Rep. Holmes and some black ministers are adamant. They insist changing the name would send the world a message about Montgomery.
      But nobody of any import in Montgomery disrespects Rosa Parks now. Her actions spoke much louder than the incidental name of a library, and than manufactured outrage.


[UPDATE: The retiring Director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Dr. Ed Bridges, names Parks' arrest as one of the fifteen most significant events in Alabama History.]