Legislator proposes Dolly Parton license plate in Louisiana to support literacy

State Rep. Mike Bayham, R-Chalmette, is proposing a special Dolly Parton license plate in Louisiana that would help fund a state literacy program for children started by the country music icon. 

Every Parton license plate would come with a $25 fee that would support the Imagination Library in Louisiana, Bayham said in a news release Thursday. The program mails one book a month to every child that joins the library. Children up to age 5 can sign up free of charge. 

“Dolly Parton used her extraordinary success to make a difference in the lives of children. This plate gives Louisianans an opportunity to celebrate her legacy while making a meaningful investment in our next generation,” Bayham said. 

The plates likely won’t be available until next year at the earliest. Bayham plans to introduce a bill to set them up in the next legislative session, which begins in April. 

Parton said she started Imagination Library  in 1995 to honor her father, Lee, a sharecropper and construction worker who never learned to read.  It initially only covered children in Sevier County, Tennessee, where Parton grew up, but has since expanded to many other states and countries.

Former Gov. John Bel Edwards expanded Imagination Library to include all young children in Louisiana in 2023.

“We won’t be done until we’re reaching every ZIP code in every parish,” said Molly Marker, state director of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in Louisiana in Bayham’s newss release. “A specialty plate gives people anywhere in the state a way to be part of that, and it puts it on the road: on the highway, in the school pickup line, at stop signs all over.”

Bayham is kicking off his campaign for the license plate at a news conference Friday at the Audubon Aquarium and Insectarium in New Orleans. Members of the Krewe of Dolly, a Mardi Gras marching group that also works with the Imagination Library, will be in attendance.