This Day in History: , Rosa Parks Ignites Bus Boycott.
December 1, 1955.
“The mother of the civil
rights movement,” Parks was jailed
in Montgomery, AL, for refusing to give
up her seat on a public bus to a white man.
A Montgomery city ordinance
required Black Americans to
sit in the back of city buses and
give up their seats to white riders.
The local chapter of the NAACP,
of which Parks was a member,
had been planning to challenge
the racist bus laws for months.
The 42-year-old seamstress'
decision to refuse her seat was
spontaneous, but she was aware
of the implications of her choice.
Parks' historic act of civil
disobedience led to the
successful Montgomery Bus Boycott,
organized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Less than a year after Parks' arrest,
the U.S. Supreme Court struck
down the bus segregation laws as
a violation of the 14th Amendment