Jeff Davis Avenue
Montgomery, Alabama

W. Jeff Davis Ave. & Rosa L. Parks Ave. & Fred D. Gray Ave. Montgomery, Alabama
each 42 x 9 x 1/8 in. (106.7 x 22.9 x 0.3 cm)
City of Montgomery, Alabama
Filed Under:
Jeff Davis Avenue
Dedicated: 1890
Removed: 2021
The intersection of Rosa Parks and Jeff Davis Avenues in Montgomery, Alabama, reflects the layering of two integrally related chapters in U.S. history, namely the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. Montgomery was a site central to the unfolding of both.
From February to May of 1861, Montgomery served as the capital of the Confederacy before it was relocated to Richmond, Virginia. Jefferson Davis (1808-1889), the Confederacy’s first and only president, lived in Montgomery during those months. Fast forward nearly a century and Montgomery was also where the Women’s Political Council and Montgomery Improvement Association staged the 1955 bus boycott, a crucial milestone of the modern Civil Rights Movement. The boycott began after the arrest of Rosa Parks (1913-2005), an African American woman who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, as required by the city’s segregation ordinances at that time.
Montgomery City Council renamed Line Street “Jeff. Davis Avenue” to honor Jefferson Davis in response to a citizen’s petition in January 1890.
Montgomery, the “Cradle of the Confederacy,” has no street named for the late Jefferson Davis, the chieftain of the “Lost Cause,” whose illustrious name and heroic deeds are inseparably linked with the city’s history.
At the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks lived in the Cleveland Court apartments just off Cleveland Avenue, a 2.5 mile stretch of which was renamed for Parks in 1986.
Whereas [Rosa Parks’s] great courage has endeared her to many people throughout the Nation when she refused to give up her seat on a city bus causing her arrest and the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Civil Rights Movement . . . NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT ORDAINED BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA, that Cleveland Avenue from Mildred Street to Fleming Road, be renamed Rosa L. Parks Avenue.
Jeff Davis Avenue was renamed Fred D. Gray Avenue in October 2021 at the behest of Mayor Steven Reed, the city’s first Black mayor. Fred D. Gray (b. 1930) is a prominent attorney who defended a number of Civil Rights activists, including Parks, Claudette Colvin, and Martin Luther King Jr. Mr. Gray grew up on Jeff Davis Avenue. He continues to practice law and as of 2024 is in the midst of litigating a suit against Macon County in order to remove the Confederate monument in Tuskegee. In renaming the street, Montgomery was required to pay a $25,000 fine for violating Alabama’s “Memorial Preservation Act.” The fee was paid by an anonymous donor.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Whose Heritage? dataset, Montgomery is still home to forty-five Confederate symbols, including streets, parks, markers, holidays, and statues.


































































































































































































































































































































































