Measure Pardoning Those Charged With Segregation-Era Protest Crimes Becomes Tenn. Law

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) _ Tennesseans charged with crimes while protesting segregation-era laws can have their records cleared beginning next month. <br/><br/>Gov. Phil Bredesen signed the Rosa Parks Act

Thursday, June 7th 2007, 10:43 pm

By: News On 6

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) _ Tennesseans charged with crimes while protesting segregation-era laws can have their records cleared beginning next month.

Gov. Phil Bredesen signed the Rosa Parks Act into law, his office said Thursday. The bill was unanimously approved by the Senate and passed the House 88-6.

``Hindsight is always 20/20,'' said House Minority Leader Jason Mumpower, a Republican. ``I think we recognize the seriousness and emotions that have happened in the past, and that's why you saw it overwhelmingly pass.''

However, some civil rights activists have said they will not seek a pardon because they consider their arrest records a badge of honor.

Last year, Alabama became the first state to pass a version of the Rosa Parks Act. The Alabama law grants a pardon, but the criminal records are kept in the state archives for use in museums or for other educational purposes.

All records would be destroyed in Tennessee unless there is a specific request to preserve them for public display.

Both Tennessee and Alabama would allow posthumous pardons, and that could apply to Parks herself, whose arrest in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus led to the bus boycott that established the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a national figure. Parks died in 2005.

A similar measure failed in Florida.