Rosa Parks

1955

In 1955, Rose Parks was a 42-year-old seamstress working at a department store in Montgomery, Alabama. On her way home from work one day in December, she got on a public bus and took a seat at the front of the "colored section." As the bus filled up, she was told to give up her seat to a white man, but she refused. For this act, she was arrested and convicted of breaking segregation laws. Rather than the act of a weary woman with "sore feet," as her action is often portrayed, Parks' refusal to give in to injustice was a conscious act. As a secretary for the N.A.A.C.P., Parks knew the meaning of her actions, though perhaps did not anticipate their full effects. Rosa Parks' arrest touched off the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a yearlong campaign by black citizens that caused financial devastation to the city transit system and eventually led to racial segregation of Alabama's buses being declared unconstitutional.