Rosa Parks is a black civil rights activist from Alabama famous for refusing to give up her seat on a bus. On December 1, 1955, Mrs. Parks refused to move to the back of the bus as required by law for black people; this sparked a 381-day bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., that led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation.
Rosa Parks act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Mrs. Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. Parks never planned her protest, but it was the type of nonviolent act that civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference advocated. She said that she wanted to help people, especially young people, to make useful lives for themselves and to help others. In nineteen eighty-seven, she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development to improve the lives of black children.
Rosa Parks 1913-2005: A Rare 1956 Interview With Parks During the Montgomery Bus Boycott