Rosa Parks Museum

The Rosa Parks Museum is located in, Montgomery, Alabama, on the historic site of Mrs. Parks’ arrest for her courageous stand against injustice. Our mission is to honor the life and legacy of Rosa Parks and that of the other individuals, organizations, and strategies that made the Montgomery Bus Boycott successful.

We uphold this mission by connecting past histories to present-day events and by providing a platform for scholarly dialogue, civic engagement, and positive social change. The need to educate young people on Mrs. Parks’ long life of courage and activism as well as how we can take those lessons and strategies used to great success in the past and connect to current social justice causes, which continue to be especially relevant today.

To keep the museum engaging to visitors today, Rosa Parks Museum is currently working with QuantumERA, LLC (an immersive solutions company, https://quantumera.com/) to create the Rosa Parks and the Women Who Made the Movement mobile application. The creation of this mobile app will allow the museum to improve engagement for all visitors, but especially younger visitors to our Children’s Wing 2^nd floor.

Our design includes a virtual Rosa Parks who will meet the visitors at 3 locations in the Children’s Wing and inspire them to learn more about her life and activism as she sat down to stand up for her rights. Upon entering that area of the museum, the students will be challenged to complete a scavenger hunt through the exhibit and create a scrapbook of their experience with original source documents and archive photos as they are challenged to answer questions about the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the people who fought for equitable treatment. Additionally, the Rosa Parks Museum will provide a set of iPads for visitors to use with the app, but it can also be downloaded on a visitor’s personal mobile device.

In its current state, the 2^nd floor area contains images of the figures and events pertinent to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the early Civil Rights Movement; however, the primary feeling is that this room is designed by adults for adults who want to take time to go through the exhibit space reading every placard and reflecting on the impact of the featured people and events. It relies heavily on text and images with no interactive opportunities.

 

Our goal with this app is to engage all visitors, but especially students on an emotional level and provide them with a series of immersive but educational experiences that will help them to better understand the political and racial oppression of Jim Crow segregation and the people (many of whom have often been overlooked) who fought to gain the rights and freedoms granted under the U.S. Constitution.

 

Creating experiences and interactions that engage the students through interactive augmented reality learning activities will help younger generations understand the bravery it took for ordinary people to stand up in the face of overt intimidation and violence. 

 

Augmented reality interactive experiences engage students in the exhibit content, inspire their imagination, and provide a deeper understanding of the people and events that shaped our history. The students are able to feel as if they are participating in history and put them closer to the original source materials that tell the stories in real-time as they happened.    

 

 Rosa Parks’ virtual character stands in the exhibit and tells her story to visitors