NASHVILLE - Tennesseans charged with crimes while protesting segregation-era laws will be able to have their records cleared beginning next month.

Gov. Phil Bredesen has signed what is known as the Rosa Parks Act into law, according to information released by his office Thursday.

Some civil rights activists have said they will not seek a pardon since they consider their arrest records a badge of honor.

Last year, Alabama became first state to pass the Rosa Parks Act. The Alabama law grants a pardon, but then sends the criminal record to the state archives to be used 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 Montgomery bus boycott that established the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a national figure. Parks died in 2005.

A similar measure failed in the Florida Legislature.

The Tennessee bill passed the House on an 88-6 vote and was approved unanimously by the Senate. Rep. Lois DeBerry and Sen. Jim Kyle, both Memphis Democrats, were the measure's main sponsors.

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