Last year, Alabama became first state to pass the Rosa Parks Act, which gives people the option of having their records expunged, and Tennessee's version won final approval in the Legislature yesterday and awaits the governor's signature. A similar measure failed in Florida.
"Unlawful assembly, disorderly conduct, refusal to move -- all of these were catchall charges under Jim Crow," said Representative Thad McClammy, a black Montgomery Democrat who sponsored the Alabama law. "A lot of these followed individuals throughout their lifetime, and they shouldn't be criminalized."
Bradford, a retired school custodian, knows that having her record cleared now won't have any real effect, but she wants to apply for a pardon certificate anyway.
"I want to have it removed, frame it, and put it on the wall," Bradford said. "It will show I was arrested fighting for my rights."
The Alabama law grants a pardon, but sends the criminal record to the state archives to be used in museums or for other educational purposes.
Tennessee's proposal would allow a person to have his or her record destroyed, unless that person requests it be preserved for public display.
Both states also would allow posthumous pardons. That could apply to Parks , whose arrest in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus led to the Montgomery bus boycott, which established the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a national figure. Parks died in 2005.
McClammy said he plans to contact Parks' s estate about a pardon for her.
