The statue of Alabama native Rosa Parks that'll be unveiled in the U.S. Capitol Wednesday is 9 feet tall. In 1955, Parks sat at least that tall when she refused to move to the back of a Montgomery bus.

Parks became the icon of the beginning of the active civil rights movement, and her civil disobedience deserves great honor. Ironically, on the same day Parks' statue is revealed, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments from Shelby County officials

.

Shelby County officials say they should no longer have to live under federal oversight called for in the Voting Rights Act because the country has made enormous racial progress.

Granted, progress has been made on some fronts. But whether the Justice Department should be removed from its voting oversight duties is a real question. Just take a look at some of the comments on these blogs if you want to see how little some attitudes have changed since Rosa Parks' day and the bloody Sunday Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights.

And, in a time when Republicans are accused of aggressively suppressing the vote with tactics like photo voter identification, purging voter rolls, creating situations where long lines exist at voting places, opposing early voting and by-mail voting, ending federal oversight of voting rights is definitely premature.

Even on a seemingly noncontroversial story like the dedication of the

, some posters can't control their naked racism. Those are the attitudes that drove Parks and many other African-Americans and others from Alabama for good, and we're still paying the high price for that brain drain.

Many of those people who argue we should put the civil rights struggle behind us are the same people who claim the confederate battle flag as somehow part of their heroic heritage or who quote politicians from 200 years ago when they want to make a point about the U.S. Constitution and government in the 21st century today.

We must never put the civil rights struggle behind us. Exactly when do civil rights no longer matter?

By commemorating the civil rights movement -- as Congress and President Barack Obama are doing on Wednesday with the dedication of the Rosa Parks statue, and as AL.com and The Birmingham News are doing this year with the 50th anniversary of the pivotal civil rights events in Birmingham during 1963 -- we ensure that even if some attitudes haven't changed, we are never going to forget that racism as an institution can be overcome through hard work, sacrifice and commitment.

We should challenge racism whenever and wherever we see it. And those folks who turn defensive when discussing racism should closely examine their own thoughts and motives. They should examine their souls.

Alabama has an ugly history -- revived and continued with misguided laws like the state's overreaching, cruel anti-immigrant law (HB 56) and inappropriate public statements by some of the state's most visible politicians.

If we don't learn from our history, we're bound to repeat it (thus, HB 56).

How about let's finally learn?

Joey Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, is a community engagement specialist for AL.com and The Birmingham News. Reach him at jkennedy@al.com.