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Students petition
for Rosa Parks honor
Students seek to honor Rosa Parks
by Dan Higgins
January 24, 2006 | The Times Union | Duanesburg, New York
Duanesburg youths start petition to get portrait of civil rights
pioneer used on paper currency
DUANESBURG -- Students in the Duanesburg School District want to
make Rosa Parks a pioneer for a second time
Middle and high school students have collected more than 200
signatures urging the U.S. Treasury Department to put Parks'
image on U.S. paper currency. Parks, who helped spark the Civil
Rights Movement in 1955 by refusing to give up her bus seat to a
white person, died last year.
If the students succeed, Parks would be the first black person
to appear on American paper currency and the first woman since
Martha Washington appeared on a $1 silver certificate in the
late 1800s, according to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing,
the U.S. Treasury division responsible for printing money.
"She changed history for everyone of every ethnicity," said
Duanesburg senior Krystal Wells, 17, who helped organize the
petition drive.
And it would be nice, she said, to see someone on a commonly
used bill who was known for peaceful protest and was not "a dead
white male."
The idea for the petition came from an annual student discussion
on race known as Study Circles. The program is run by the group
Schenectady County Embraces Diversity, which was formed in 1998
following a hate crime in Albany.
Brian Wright, a Study Circles organizer, said the program has
been offered to Schenectady County high school students for six
years and to middle school students for three years. After a day
of group discussions on race, participants must come up with
ways they can put what they learned into action.
Wright said the idea for the petition to honor Parks came out of
the middle school discussion group, in part because that group
watched a video about the Montgomery bus boycott, which followed
Parks' arrest.
Colby Hochmuth, 14, a Duanesburg ninth-grader, said she hoped
that her school's petition drive would spread to other school
districts in Schenectady County.
Neil Silverman, a Duanesburg guidance counselor, said the goal
is to spread the idea all over the Capital Region and then look
for an even wider audience.
"Maybe getting a celebrity involved to champion our cause would
help, especially if we can get 5,000 to 10,000 signatures," he
said. He said Oprah Winfrey would be a perfect spokeswoman, but
that the petition drive is still a long way off from enlisting
her help.
As for their chances of success, Claudia Dickens, a spokeswoman
for Engraving and Printing, said it would probably be a
difficult task, but not impossible.
"The final word is with the secretary of the treasury," she
said. "Obviously, before there were major changes like that
there would be a long, political process first."
She said the bureau gets suggestions all the time for whom to
feature on paper money, and they range from the obvious to the
more unusual.
"We have received many suggestions for Martin Luther King Jr.
And also for Elvis. But not too many for Rosa Parks," she said.
But since Parks died last year, that may soon change, she said.
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