Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks [1913 – 2005]. In 1950’s racially segregated Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, a hard-working seamstress, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger. This brave act of defiance led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, sparking nationwide efforts to end racial segregation of public facilities. She became an activist in the civil rights movement and was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Award by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. The United States Congress has called her "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement."