A Ku Klux Klan-sponsored stretch of highway will soon be named after civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks.

Gov. Mel Carnahan plans to sign legislation next Tuesday that will create the Rosa Parks Highway, a portion of Interstate 55 near downtown St. Louis. The Klan won the right to join the state's Adopt-A-Highway cleanup program in November.

"I think the governor appreciates the irony of the KKK picking up trash along the Rosa Parks Highway," spokesman Jerry Nachtigal said Monday. "But regardless of how it's done, honoring Rosa Parks is a very noble thing to do."

Parks' refusal in 1955 to yield her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus made her the matriarch of the civil rights movement.

Thomas Robb, national director of the Ku Klux Klan in Harrison, Ark., said the governor's decision to sign the legislation is a "betrayal" of white Christians.