Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, she famously refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus, leading to her arrest. This act of defiance sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted for 381 days and resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. Parks also worked as a secretary for the NAACP and co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in 1987. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. Parks passed away on October 24, 2005, in Detroit, Michigan.