Group opposes new street name

“Rosa L. Parks Avenue” signs will go up on Cleveland Avenue despite residents’ complaints that the Montgomery City Council renamed their street without consulting them.

About 10 residents appeared at the council meeting Tuesday to ask that the decision to rename the street be reconsidered, but the council took no action.

Jack Hogg, Mayor Emory Folmar’s executive assistant, said that after the meeting that the signs would be put up as soon as work on the street is completed. He did not know how long that work would continue.

Ella Bell, appearing before the council for the third time, asked that public meetings be held in the area to gauge community reaction to the name change.

She said she didn’t necessarily disapprove of the change, but that the council should have asked more property owners what they thought.

Parks was a Montgomery seamstress arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man, kicking off the Montgomery bus boycott and giving steam to the civil rights movement.