Parks, Rosa (1913–2005) and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Rosa Parks became a national symbol of the civil rights movement when on Thursday, December 1, 1955 she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. Her subsequent arrest sparked the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which is widely considered to be the beginning of the modern civil rights movement. The boycott, originally meant to last only a day, continued for more than a year and resulted in a Supreme Court decision outlawing segregated seating on public buses.